


Compulsion

by Lead_Zeppelin



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow, Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:26:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 28
Words: 148,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24500767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lead_Zeppelin/pseuds/Lead_Zeppelin
Summary: Alex Mercer has revived from being shot to death, and finds himself in a world far more fantastical and dangerous than the one he barely remembers. When aspiring superhero Taylor Hebert decides to help this apparent Case 53, they are both drawn into a game of deadly secrets, hidden monsters, and dire consequences.
Comments: 54
Kudos: 132





	1. Incubation 1.1

From nothingness, there emerged a kaleidoscopic jumble of sensations.

Once the avalanche of perceptions were broken down into inputs of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, they became recognizable. The feeling of hard, wet ground below. The sound of rushing water. The smell of damp and rot. The taste of cotton and coppery blood. Darkness.

His first conscious thought was that he was awake, and he was not at all happy about that. The nausea was slowly replaced by a dull ache all over, accompanied by sharp, insistent pangs of hunger.

As daunting as the thought of moving was, he was so profoundly uncomfortable lying in this position that he couldn't take it anymore. He opened his eyes, not that it made much difference. It was almost as dark with his eyes open. His whole body was suffused with a strange sensitivity, as if someone had cranked his body's proprioception up to 11 and then thrown some crazy synesthesia into the mix. It even felt like he was _tasting_ through his skin—or rather there was a sensation coming from his skin that was similar to taste. At the same time, he felt oddly hollow, as if random patches of his insides were numb. The parts that weren't numb felt like they were shifting around, splitting and flowing into itself like some creepy lava lamp of flesh.

Was he high on some kind of drug or something? Where the _hell_ had he woken up, anyway?

He pushed himself up and got to his feet, but he felt so light and hollow that he nearly overbalanced.

Looking around, he saw very dim light reflecting off of placid water. He was standing on the access walkway of a concrete tunnel of some sort, with water to his right, darkness behind him, and faint yellow light ahead. It wasn't daylight, it was artificial. Only one thing to do, then.

He moved forward cautiously. He couldn't see or hear anyone, but every fiber in him felt tense, like he was being watched.

Why was he so on edge? More importantly, why didn't he already _know_ the reason he was here?

He didn't know where he might be, or who he might be afraid of. He didn't even know what this place was. He reached for something to explain this, reached and found…

_Nothing_.

Despite his instincts screaming at him to move, the cold horror of that realization froze him in his tracks.

He tried to remember anything about himself, anything at all. There had to be some history, some context, some memory that explained this. He focused all his will on a singular question—

_Who am I?_

Half-formed images danced in his mind's eye like the vanishing details of a dream. Places without meaning, rooms with no features, people with blurred faces. He _couldn't remember._ He didn't even know _why_ he couldn't remember.

He had a name. For fuck's sake, he _had_ to know his own name!

He tried to recall it, but failed. There were no connections or associations for him to seize on and follow. Everything in his head was unmoored, disconnected from everything else. He couldn't remember his name because he couldn't remember any distinct experiences before waking up here, let alone anyone calling him by it.

A shiver of pure dread raced through his entire body. Some instinctive part of him recoiled so strongly at this feeling of panicked helplessness that he nearly gagged.

_No_. This couldn't be happening, he couldn't _let_ this happen. It had to be drugs or something, clouding his mind, making him forget. His memories must still be there, since he could sort of _feel_ where they should be, he just couldn't grasp the details. This was no time to panic, that would only make his mental disarray worse.

If only he could _focus_. It was so hard to think straight with his body practically swimming in strange sensations, particularly that sharp, aching hunger clawing at his insides. He had to push those aside.

He needed to work his way back to some kind of logic. If he could use that to fill in the gaps, then maybe he could make a connection that jogged his memory.

First things first: it was obvious that his mind wasn't completely gone. Looking around, he wasn't _confused_ by anything he saw, unlike stroke victims. He could recognize the concrete and water and so on for what it was, and he was lucid enough to keep track of his train of thought, though his hunger, synesthesia, and general unease were a constant background distraction. He knew that this phenomenon he was experiencing was called 'amnesia,' just like he implicitly knew without prompting that the language he spoke was English. The problem was that he couldn't track that knowledge back to any experiences. It was like the threads connecting the ideas to their sources had all been cut.

For some reason that he couldn't identify, just the term _amnesia_ set off alarm bells of incredulity and skepticism, like it was some sort of contrived pseudoscience. It was beyond frustrating—he was getting these nebulous feelings and associations, but he didn't have the slightest idea where he'd gotten them, or how reliable his feelings were. They just popped into his head, fully comprehensible, but seemingly out of nowhere.

Despite his skepticism, he had a contradictory instinct, a strange certainty that amnesia was actually a real thing—as if experiencing it for himself wasn't enough to prove that. Did that imply it was rare? How did amnesia _work,_ anyway? Was it permanent?

Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but he was pretty sure that amnesia wasn't permanent, or at least it wasn't _always_ permanent. It was impossible to tell, so he really had no choice but to trust his intuition.

Clearly, he was suffering from retrograde amnesia affecting his episodic memory. At least his semantic memory was intact enough to remember things like that worthless bit of trivia, not that being able to put a label on his problem helped him to solve it in any way. He needed to _do_ something.

How would someone go about finding their identity? Just go find the nearest person and ask them for help? Hell no. He might as well draw up a sign saying _I am vulnerable, please victimize me._ Fuck that.

Then the obvious answer came to him, and he felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. He brought his full attention to the sensation of a lump resting in his left front pocket. He'd been subconsciously aware of it all along, but in his addled state, he hadn't connected that to his problem.

Feeling around at the weight in his pocket, he felt a thrill of triumph as he withdrew a folded square of leather. A wallet. _Of course_ that should be the first place to look if you couldn't remember who you were. People kept their IDs in their wallets, right? It _felt_ right, at least.

He approached the entrance of the tunnel, sneaking as quietly as he could, though he had no idea why he felt the need to do so. The jaundiced yellow glow of a cobweb-strewn service light on the wall near the entrance allowed him to see better. As he approached, something odd caught his attention. The front of his shirt felt sticky and stiff, and there was still that completely nonsensical feeling of something that sort of tasted coppery resting on his chest and stomach. He looked down, and nearly jumped out of his skin at what he saw.

His black leather jacket and gray hoodie were both left unzipped, and under that was a formerly-white button-up dress shirt. All three layers of clothing were _drenched_ in tacky, half-congealed blood.

He froze for a moment, staring at it in disbelief, then frantically unbuttoned the shirt, checking himself for injury, even though nothing felt amiss. Opening his shirt proved that this was indeed the case. His blood-smeared torso didn't even have a single cut.

More to the point, were those round little holes in his shirt _fucking bullet holes?_ There were more than a dozen of them! Some of the holes in his hoodie perfectly lined up with holes in the shirt underneath, so he couldn't imagine what else they might be.

He hastily zipped up his jacket to hide the bloodstains, which weren't as visible on the black leather. Holy _fuck,_ that must have been someone else's blood. It was way too fresh, and he would have noticed any cuts elsewhere on his body with his bizarrely keen proprioception.

What the hell was going on? What _happened?_ Had he assaulted someone, _killed_ someone? Surely no one was likely to survive losing that much blood. And then what, had he stolen their shirt? What possible reason would anyone have to do that? The only reason he could think of to take the bloodied shirt from a body was so that he could play dead during some sort of mass shooting rampage. The problem with that notion was that it made no sense whatsoever given his surroundings, and even in a more likely location, it would still be far-fetched.

He had been jumpy before, but now he was on the verge of outright panic. He needed to get the hell out of here, find somewhere to regroup, get replacements for the ruined clothes that could only be interpreted as some kind of incriminating evidence, and figure this whole situation out. But first things first: he needed to take stock of his resources.

Returning his attention to his wallet, he opened it up. His driver's license sat in a little laminated pocket on the left, and the picture showed a clean-shaven white man with dark, wavy hair that was neatly combed back. The license read Alexander James Mercer, born July 16, 1979. The signature was a nearly incomprehensible 'Alex Mercer.' To his relief, the name did strike a familiar chord with him, but it was more like the name of a half-remembered childhood friend than _his_ name.

The picture on the license was easy enough to verify—that he was a white man was obvious, and thanks to his synesthesia warping his proprioception into something like a mental image of himself, he could tell without even looking at his reflection that the face in the picture was a perfect match. He had no idea what to make of that skill or delusion or whatever the fuck it was, so he moved on to the rest of the wallet's contents.

Alex's driver's license and given address were both for Manhattan, but that only gave him a vague sense of familiarity as well. He knew Manhattan was a borough of New York City, the world's most famous metropolis, but the card could have said he was from Honolulu for all the detail it provided him. In fact, New York City was probably one of the worst places for an amnesiac to be from, since it was so huge and famous pretty much everyone already knew what it was. He might be in Manhattan right now, for that matter, and not even know it.

Another object of interest was a car insurance card for a 2009 Dodge Challenger, which was a kind of American muscle car if his vague intuition was correct. So he had a car, apparently, but no car keys on him—the only thing he had in his pockets was the wallet. There wasn't even a cell phone or a written list of contacts, which at this point felt like a personal insult, or possibly the result of enemy action.

The rest of the wallet didn't yield much more than that. There was a health insurance card, with much the same information as the driver's license, a grand total of sixty-three dollars counting the emergency twenty hidden behind his license, and a spare condom.

Wonderful. He was completely fucked, but at least he had protection.

There wasn't even a goddamned debit card in his wallet. Who the hell didn't have any debit or credit cards? Was Alex Mercer some kind of ascetic or Luddite? Maybe it was just this fucked-up situation and the blood on his shirt making him paranoid, but he had a sneaking suspicion that there were credit cards in there at one point, but they'd been removed for fear of being tracked.

In a fit of anger, Alex almost chucked the wallet into the river or canal or whatever-the-fuck kind of waterway he was standing next to. He restrained himself, just barely, hissing through his clenched teeth.

He wouldn't find out anything more if he threw away his only lead in this tunnel. For that matter, he still had no idea how he found himself here, and the thought of sticking around any longer set his teeth on edge.

Alex stepped out of the tunnel, and found himself at the base of a heavily graffitied drainage canal, with the distant peaks of medium-sized buildings visible over the sides. Whole geological strata of graffiti and moldering trash adorned the place, including various used needles.

Charming.

He had sixty-three dollars and no credit cards to his name, but even though this place looked completely abandoned, he didn't doubt that he'd soon be jumped by muggers and divested of that meager wealth if he didn't get a move on.

Alex scrambled up the sides of the canal easily enough, but once he was at the top, he was at a loss for what to do next. He was clearly in a decent-sized city of some description, but damned if he knew if it was New York City or not. There wasn't much in the way of identifiable landmarks or anything, and he wasn't quite sure he'd be able to recognize any if there were. At least the street signs were in English. He was on Archer Street, not that the name meant anything to him.

Should he find a police station? No, for some reason, that felt like a really, really bad idea, even if he got rid of the bloody clothes beforehand.

On further introspection, didn't the fact that he was so averse to the idea of going to the authorities say something bad about him? He wasn't some kind of fugitive, was he? The label felt like it fit, just like his name did, but the fuzzy ambiguity of his memory was so vague it was probably less helpful than having no memory at all.

Assuming he really was a fugitive...

What kind of crime was he wanted for? Was his name and face plastered on wanted posters?

There were other options to consider. He could ask someone where the closest public library was. He was pretty sure that there would be one around, even though all he knew about this city was that it was either in the United States or Canada, and he only knew that because the few cars out at this hour drove on the right side of the road, and the traffic signs were in English.

Once he was at the library, he could wait until they opened in the morning and look himself up. He could at least find out what city he was in, and whether he had any outstanding arrest warrants. Or find his family and friends, for that matter. It was more than a little concerning that finding evidence of a criminal past took priority in his mind over finding his hypothetical family and friends, but then again, he had woken up inside a tunnel in the middle of a filthy slum, with no memories and covered in blood, so maybe inferring a criminal record or an estranged family wasn't that big of a stretch.

Going to the hospital was an alternative—it seemed like the thing to do if you were an amnesiac—but then he'd run into the same identification problem as the police station, and besides, he didn't feel like he'd had his skull smashed in with a lead pipe, or however one went about getting amnesia. Physically, he felt fine.

Well, actually, he felt ravenous, dizzily light on his feet, and he was still feeling something like taste through his skin, but aside from all that, he was just fine.

Yeah. Right.

In any case, the library seemed like his best bet. Information was what he needed, and the library was where he'd find it. Actually _getting_ to it was another question. For all he knew, the library might be on the next block over or two whole bus routes away...

Wait a minute. Bus stops, those would have maps, why didn't he think of that before? Sure, he had amnesia, and if his wallet was anything to go by, he drove a car instead of riding the bus, but still—this meant he didn't have to talk to anyone, and possibly reveal that he didn't have a clue what city he was in. Score one for Mr. Alexander James Mercer.

He picked a direction and started walking. In a dark alley long the way, he spotted the dim glow of someone holding a lighter under a spoon.

Fuckin' _lovely_. Just what kind of shithole did Alex find himself in? He wished he had a weapon or something on him, even just a pocket knife would have been better than nothing.

Feeling jumpy, Alex walked fast and gave a wide berth to the various druggies, thugs, prostitutes, and muttering homeless people as he made his way, feeling much more comfortable hiding in the shadows and avoiding the few working streetlamps. Seeing the light from a fast food restaurant in the distance only reminded Alex that he was so hungry he felt like he'd implode. The only thing stopping him from making a beeline for food was the sheer panic he felt at the thought of his bloodstained clothes being noticed. He had to find some new clothes before the library opened up. Maybe he could steal from a clothesline somewhere.

Of course, that was assuming anyone around here ever washed their clothes. Christ, this place was decrepit. Nearly half of the apartments and businesses looked like they didn't even have electricity, and most of the windows were broken, boarded up, covered with graffiti, or all of the above.

Alex was grateful for the hood he wore, as an added level of distance and anonymity from everyone else. His jittery body wanted nothing more than to punch something or run away at top speed. He felt like his pulse should be hammering in his ears, but oddly, it wasn't. He didn't feel _calm,_ exactly, but nor could he discern his heartbeat, even with his proprioception. He knew exactly where his heart was, but it was shot through with so many numb spots it felt like it had more holes than Swiss cheese, and it _wasn't beating._

Alex put the thought out of his mind. He flatly refused to entertain his subconscious notion that he was dead and this was some kind of afterlife, even if this place looked like it could give Hell a run for its money. He was probably just too nervous to detect his heartbeat or something. Either that, or he was much less lucid than he thought.

Drugs. It had to be. Lots and lots of drugs. By God, if this was what a bad trip was like, Alex would never even _look_ at a recreational drug ever again.

Finally, after walking a few blocks, he found a covered bus stop which had once been painted green, but which now sported a patchwork of graffiti. Wherever he was, the locals liked marking their territory, and from the looks of it, the city had simply given up on trying to stay ahead of them.

Alex was a little worried that the bus map would be rendered illegible by the graffiti, but fortunately the heavily scratched plastic cover had escaped the worst of the spray paint.

Looking past the crudely-carved swastikas and marijuana leaves, Alex saw that the city was Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, which was apparently a substantial port city, with the main downtown area in the southwest crescent of a large bay, and major roads leading south to Boston and north to Portland.

_What?_

Alex had never even _heard_ of Brockton Bay before, and even with the amnesia, that still seemed odd. He didn't know of any major cities on the New England coast north of Boston until you reached Maine, and judging from the map and the huge skyscrapers visible in the distance, this Brockton Bay was a lot _bigger_ than Portland. Then again, he couldn't recall how he knew these things, so maybe Brockton Bay was just a hole in his memory, a place he'd never visited.

He was so _done_ with this fucking amnesia. It had ceased to be terrifying, and now it was just royally pissing him off.

The map was difficult to read in the gloom, but he was able to discern his own position—near Archer's Bridge—and apparently the Brockton Bay Central Library was a good deal south of where he was, more towards the downtown area.

Considering it seemed to be the dead of night, he probably had at least five hours to find some clothes before it opened. All he'd have to do was make his way there and avoid any people until then.

Hopefully he'd find something to eat along the way. Hell, he was more than willing to dumpster-dive at this point, if it meant finding something to eat. Goddamn, he was _starving_.


	2. Incubation 1.2

**Incubation 1.2**

It was just past midnight, and I was headed into the bad part of town.

My parents’ warnings about sticking to the Boardwalk and avoiding the Docks were ringing in my head, but I was here for a reason. I was searching for the kinds of criminal activity this area became famous for after the local shipping industry collapsed.

By day, the difference between this part of town and the rich parts of town was obvious, even if the line between them was thinner than one might think. By night, though, the difference was even more obvious. The Docks were, first of all, _dark_. Besides a few indoor lights here and there that accidentally provided the majority of the street’s illumination, most of the buildings didn’t seem to have any power at all, and the street I was walking down didn’t have working streetlights. It was a sharp contrast from the lively glow of downtown visible on the horizon.

There were plenty of places for squatters around here, apartment buildings and warehouses left over from the district’s heyday back when the cargo ships weren’t rotting in the Boat Graveyard, so there weren’t exactly many homeless people to avoid out on the streets. The only people out and about would be the crack whores, drunks, and gangsters.

It was easy enough to steer clear of people while I looked for likely targets, aided by the bugs positioned all around me. I’d been continuously building up a swarm as I ventured further into the Docks, my power individually controlling each of the countless thousands of bugs within a roughly two-block radius of me. Almost every kind of flying insect and silk-spinning arachnid had some sort of use. Even harmless midges helped bulk out the swarm, and I used my sense of all the bugs’ positions to provide a rough topographical map of my surroundings, helping me navigate and search all at the same time. Maybe some of the bugs’ behavior was a little suspicious, but it was late enough that I doubted anyone had noticed yet.

I crept along, confident my freshly dyed superhero costume and expanded awareness would keep me hidden in the dark.

There was no warning for the piercing pain that split my skull.

I tripped and fell with a choked gasp. My chin hit the dirty sidewalk, making me bite my tongue, but the agony in my head was so overwhelming I was barely even aware of the taste of blood in my mouth. Did I just get _shot?_

_No, it’s coming from my power,_ I realized belatedly. There was something off in the distance that was causing this feedback. It quickly became clear I was getting pummeled with an open connection to its sensory data, like my brain was hooked up to a fire hose on full blast. I struggled to rein in the deluge of information my power was receiving. Almost immediately, the pain lessened from being blinding to a mere residual headache.

My first coherent thought after the shock wore off was that this was some kind of attack from a different cape, but that didn’t seem quite right. It felt like it had come from _inside_ my power. The buzzing at the edge of my awareness honed in on the new sensation, tentatively at first. I was forced to reduce the connection almost as far as it would go, like squinting in the glare of a spotlight, then I began to make sense of it.

My swarm had somehow _exponentially_ increased in complexity in the space of an instant, all from a single new organism entering my power’s radius. I tried to let my power get a handle on what it was, the way I could instinctively understand an insect’s anatomy.

Bizarre information flooded into me. Its biology was like no other insect I'd felt, nor like any living thing I’d ever heard of. Despite that, some distant part of me couldn’t shake a feeling of familiarity, or maybe _déjà vu_. To my power, it was a sensation like performing a rote motion or slipping on a pair of perfectly broken-in shoes.

The thing seemed to be some kind of colony. I couldn’t tell exactly where one part of it ended and the next part began. It was a dense amalgamation, formed of millions of tiny, bright nodes of simple awareness that somehow networked together. The basic shape that repeated over and over was something like tendrils or roots, but they were animated and alive, moving around and sliding through one another almost like a liquid. They fused into a singular entity in a pattern that repeated at different scales, like those computer animations of fractals. The tiny, worm-like tendrils seemed to branch off and continue down to sizes smaller than my power could discern, yet they all linked together to create larger tendrils, which themselves networked together to form the gestalt whole, which was far too complex for me to grasp.

I sank further into the information overload before I recognized and understood the shape the mass of tendrils took. It was humanoid, but it wasn’t a human being, just the façade of one. Outwardly, he—and it was probably a he, if I was interpreting the general outline of his body correctly—had a solid but thin outer layer. However, on the inside, his body was mostly decomposed into a thin liquid slurry, leaving behind those seething fungus-like tendrils, which still formed the vague outlines of the rotted muscles, skeleton, and organs. The tendrils were all squirming in their fluid-filled skin sac in an alien, sickeningly boneless way, like a corpse teeming with maggots, only upright and walking.

It was all too much. I recoiled from my power’s contact in horror. I didn’t consider myself squeamish, certainly less so after getting my powers, but the thing’s insides were so far beyond hideous and revolting it was almost unbearable to perceive, even in my imagination. I felt the urge to vomit rising in the back of my throat.

What the _hell?_ Was it some kind of cape? No, that couldn’t be, my power never worked on humans, so why should parahumans be any different? It didn’t even work on things as complicated as _rats_. Was this some kind of parahuman-made parasite? A mad scientist Tinker’s creation? Or maybe it was just one of those inhuman-looking capes masquerading as a human?

Whatever he was, I could feel the potential control I could exert over him, as effortless as moving a fly. In fact, my power _thrummed_ with the potential to control him, or at least control the tiny, simple nodes of awareness that his body seemed to be made of.

Reluctantly, I withdrew my power’s attention from this cape-worm-thing entirely, excluding him like I excluded my bugs’ more difficult senses. His presence became reduced to an indistinct droning sensation off in the distance, a powerful presence that reminded me of the science class demonstration of gravity that placed a heavy rock on a bedsheet, showing how it drew in everything nearby the strongest, but left the edges mostly the same. My headache subsided completely, leaving me feeling shaken.

I took a minute to gather my thoughts. The thing, for lack of a better descriptor, was walking south on a course that would take him down a parallel street to me. He didn’t seem to be aware of me at all, judging by his unhurried pace, so I was in no immediate danger.

What should I do? I had no idea who or what this thing was. I was afraid to get any closer to him, but what if it was some kind of villain or monster? I had to at least make sure he didn’t attack anyone. I needed more information, and it wasn’t like I had any other leads to follow. If something bad happened, I could always try to stop him using my power. The feeling of potential control over him was doing a lot to prevent me from freaking out more than I already was.

Moving as quietly as possible, I made my way to intercept him. I hid in an alley and waited for his presence to pass by so I could follow, and kept pace once he was half a block away.

I couldn’t make out much from this distance, but the next street we walked down had a few working street lamps that helped me see him. He was wearing a black leather jacket with white bands around the upper arms and a red pattern on the back like wings, a dark gray hood, and dark pants. I still couldn’t make out much in the way of his clothes’ color from the dim street lamps, and since his hands were in his pockets I definitely couldn’t make out any skin, making me wonder if he had a human skin color or something unnatural instead. My restricted overview of his biology and relative position only gave me the vaguest sense of his shape, really more like an intuitive description rather than a mental image, so I had no idea what his features looked like, but I gathered he was a parahuman. There wasn’t much else he could be if he was walking around pretending to be a normal person.

After a few minutes of walking, I started to feel awkward. He wasn’t even doing anything, just walking, and here I was acting like some kind of stalker. Should I go up to him? Confront him? What would I even _say?_

I was still debating how to approach him when I noticed he made a sudden deviation in his path. Apparently, he’d seen the trouble before I did.

Down the street, there were two men standing in front of one of the two-story brick apartment buildings that littered the area. The parahuman I was following was crossing the street to avoid them, but apparently they saw him.

“Oi! Don’t move!” one of the men yelled in heavily asian-accented English. On second glance, there was no doubt they were members of the Azn Bad Boys, dressed in red and green hoodies. The one that shouted pulled out what was unmistakably a gun from his waistband and pointed it squarely at the parahuman, who had made it halfway across the street.

My heart started pounding in overdrive and I immediately started repositioning my swarm, almost forgetting to exclude the parahuman from my power’s control.

The parahuman slowly raised his hands, and made no other move.

The two gangsters rushed over into the middle of the street, the second one pulling out a butterfly knife.

“Fucking Empire,” the second one snarled in much better English, holding his knife up to the thing’s face. “The fuck do you think you’re doing here?”

I could barely make out the parahuman’s reply, but it sounded like “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

The knife-wielding gangster spat into the parahuman’s face. “You think you can bring your pasty bitch ass here alone in Empire colors without the other faggots to protect you?”

Shit, they thought he was a gang member because of his race and clothes. Maybe they were even right, but I couldn’t take that chance. I had to distract them. In that moment my confidence in my costume’s bullet-resistance dropped down to nothing, but my armor and bugs were all I had to work with, so I needed to make the best of them.

I started sprinting at an oblique angle across the street, hoping to throw off the gun’s aim. “HEY! OVER HERE!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

Sure enough, all three of them looked right at me, the gunman subconsciously turning his gun to face me.

“Shit! _Cape!_ Shoot—” that was all the knife-wielding gangster managed to get out before a tsunami of bugs fell on him and the gunman from above, causing them to choke and sputter as countless flies and moths forced their way into their mouths, eyes, ears, and noses.

The parahuman didn’t waste the opportunity. He tackled the gun-wielding gangster and grabbed his gun arm in both hands, bearing him to the ground. There was a loud crack that echoed up and down the street as the gun went off, but the gun wasn’t pointed anywhere near anyone else. The parahuman easily ripped the gun out of the gangster’s hands and got back to his feet, backing up and pointing the gun at the two gangsters, both of which were now down on the ground and writhing, trying to clear away the insects that were attacking them.

“What the _fuck?”_ the parahuman said, staring at the mass of insects. Now that I was closer and had a better angle, I could tell his face in profile looked like a normal white guy, despite his disfigured insides.

“Don’t shoot!” I said, holding up my hands.

The parahuman’s head snapped to the side to look at me, but his stolen gun remained pointed at the two gangsters on the ground.

“Who are you? What’s with the mask?” the parahuman demanded.

I momentarily blanked. I didn’t have a cape name, and I couldn’t just blurt out my real name. “I’m... I’m a hero. I set my bugs on those two so you could get away,” I said.

The parahuman did a double-take between me and the insects. “You’re saying you did this? _How?”_

“I can control bugs,” I said, gesturing at the men on the ground. “It’s safe now. They aren’t going to attack you.”

There was a tense silence for a few seconds as the parahuman alternated between staring at me and staring at the retching, bug-covered gangsters.

“I can’t believe I’m actually entertaining the idea you’re doing this,” the parahuman said disgustedly, before putting the gun—a stubby revolver, I noticed—into his right jacket pocket. “How are you controlling them? Some kind of spray, or pheromone?”

“I, uh, just give them mental commands. It’s my power. I’m a parahuman.” I said, lowering my hands as I grew more confused by the second.

The parahuman gave me a look reserved for the stark-raving mad. “Para—did you just say _parahuman?_ The hell is that supposed to be?”

I was shocked by his apparently genuine ignorance. “You know, a person with superpowers? Um. How can you _not_ know that? You look too young to remember the time before they existed. Are you... feeling okay?”

The parahuman growled in frustration. “Fuck. You’re insane. Or _I’m_ insane. This has to be some kind of bad trip or hallucination or something. Look, I can’t even remember who I am or how I got to this city, but I know that _superpowers aren’t real.”_

I felt a cold chill race over me. “Wait, do you not have _any_ memories?”

The parahuman hissed through his teeth and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Ffffuck. Forget it. This is just so... God _damn_ it.”

“Maybe I could help?” I suggested. “I could call the Protectorate, maybe they’ll know someone who can fix your memory.”

“No. This is crazy. I’m leaving.” the parahuman said, starting to walk away at a brisk pace.

“Wait! It might not be safe!” I said, hurrying to walk alongside him.

The parahuman pointed at the outline of the gun in his jacket. “If this thing isn’t just another hallucination, then I can take care of myself.”

“That’s not—hold on, I’ve heard of something like this, new parahumans with no memories waking up in strange cities! Aren’t you a parahuman too? Don’t you notice anything strange about yourself?” I said hurriedly, trying to remember the foggy details from my internet browsing. I’d researched Faultline and her team before, and the technical term they’d used for Gregor and Newter was Case 53, or so I thought. I didn’t pay much attention to the cape jargon, preferring to know names, costumes, and powers, but if I remembered correctly, Case 53 referred to a group of parahumans with physical mutations and amnesia that showed up out of the blue, just like this guy.

My question certainly got the parahuman’s attention. He stopped in his tracks and looked at me, the shocked expression on his face quickly morphing into a focused intensity.

Before either of us could say anything, though, we were interrupted by the roar of an engine echoing down the street. A white sports car, one of those wedge-shaped ones from the ‘90s with rounded edges and pop-up headlights came tearing onto the street, its tires shrieking as it slalomed into view and accelerated right towards us.

I started looking for an escape route, but the car had already slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt about forty feet away. The Case 53 drew the revolver out of his pocket.

A hulking, tattooed man wearing nothing but jeans and a metal eastern dragon mask got out of the passenger’s side, followed by three gangsters.

I’d never seen him beyond news reports and online articles, but I recognized the leader of the ABB immediately. Lung, the man who had gone up against whole teams of heroes and won.

"Empire," Lung spat the guttural word at us, punctuated by an _actual_ tongue of fire that shot out of the mouth of the dragon mask.

_“Run!”_ I yelled, withdrawing my swarm from the prone gangsters and diverting them to Lung and his reinforcements to cover our escape. I started to flee, but the Case 53 was only backing away from Lung instead of running, distracted by aiming the revolver.

Lung charged at us. While the more useless bugs attacked the other gangsters, I dropped every wasp, bee, spider, brown-tailed moth, and fire ant at my immediate disposal onto his bare skin, each biting or stinging as much as possible, but he didn’t even break stride.

The Case 53 managed to get four rapid shots off before the gun clicked empty, but the bullets only made matters worse. Lung wasn’t stopped by the four spurts of blood that appeared on his tattooed chest, nor by the wasp that managed to sting him in the left eye. Instead, he blazed up in flames and swelled in size. Lung’s fire illuminated half the street as he plowed into the Case 53 like a runaway freight train. Lung grabbed him by the throat in one hand and smashed him against the wall of the apartment building hard enough to leave cracks in the brick, then slammed him into the ground like a rag doll. The empty gun clattered away from the Case 53’s grip.

I hesitated for only a moment before I turned and started running back, fishing in my armor’s convex storage pack for my canister of pepper spray, desperately hoping that if I could distract Lung for even a moment, we might both get away.

Lung wasn’t even looking in my direction. He had set himself fully on fire and was growing before my eyes, sprouting metallic claws from his fingertips as the flames roared up from his feet all the way past his head. The fire wasn’t burning him, it just roiled off his heavily tattooed skin in great billowing plumes, but I could see it scorching the Case 53’s neck and face, turning the skin from white to red to black.

The Case 53 responded by bellowing in pain and fury, and with no gun to fall back on, he instead brought his knees up to his chest and _kicked_.

Lung was launched into the air like a flaming comet, reaching twice as high as the apartment building across the street before he hit his zenith and began to fall, crashing onto the roof. I skidded to a stop and stared at the Case 53 in shock. He was clearly some kind of Brute, to use the derogatory-sounding term that had stuck for people like Alexandria and Glory Girl, parahumans with enhanced strength.

The look on the Case 53’s burned face was blank for a moment, but then he bared his teeth in triumph. His neck and face blurred for an instant, replaced by a flash of black tendrils, and suddenly his skin was undamaged, though his clothes remained scorched. He felt at his chin appreciatively, then got to his feet and cast an incredulous glance at me.

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

I shook my head frantically, snapping out of my surprise. “We have to go! He only gets stronger the longer you fight him!”

As if summoned by my words, Lung appeared on the rooftop across from us. He must have been eight feet tall by now, and his body was starting to distort. His neck and arms were getting disproportionately long, and his shoulders must have been three feet across. Even as we watched, rows upon rows of spade-shaped metallic scales burst from underneath his skin, radiating out from his chest and shredding the last vestiges of his disintegrating jeans. The scales then lay flat, overlapping to form an armor that looked impenetrable.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the Case 53 said, sounding almost resigned.

With a single, powerful leap, Lung launched himself off of the roof and landed mere feet away from us.

This time, we scattered in different directions. I could feel the Case 53’s rapidly retreating presence behind me as he dashed away at a speed impossible for a human. Fast as he was, he didn’t make it three long strides before Lung was upon him with another superhuman strength-fueled leap.

Lung plunged into the Case 53 like a pouncing tiger, piercing his torso and upper arms with ten searing claws and smashing him into the pavement. I sent in more wasps and bees, hoping I might incapacitate Lung’s remaining eye, but a huge burst of fire rushed over him, and even from a distance I could feel the heat like standing next to a blast furnace. I reeled back, feeling every nearby bug in my swarm die in the wave of heat.

I watched helplessly as the Case 53 was impaled by a prison of claws, held facedown on the pavement as Lung burned him alive. He tried to push himself up, impaling himself further on the claws, but Lung just raised a foot and smashed him down again. Lung didn’t seem as strong as the Case 53 yet, but he had reach and an advantageous position that he exploited to the fullest, and time was on his side. The biggest disadvantage Lung had was the fact that his heat and flames naturally rose, making his attempt to burn the parahuman below him less effective.

I rushed forward, unaware of even making the decision to do so. I had to help, or else the Case 53 was going to die. A lucky wasp sting had already disabled one of Lung's eyes in my opening attack, and I still had my pepper spray. I made sure I was aiming the nozzle correctly, careful to control the shaking in my hands.

Okay, new plan.

I began drawing my bugs around Lung’s head like a miniature tornado, just out of reach of his flames. I set them to buzzing and chirruping, whatever noise they could manage.

Lung’s inhumanly serpentine neck twisted around to look right at me, his remaining luminous orange eye glowing like molten metal behind his mask.

I froze before the monster out of nightmares. I’d never felt such fear, never even imagined it.

Against every instinct, I broke out of my petrification. I whipped my hand up, took aim at Lung's face, and sprayed the concentrated capsaicin directly into his eye. There was a flare as some of the pepper spray caught fire, but the majority hit the mark.

Lung screamed with enough force to vibrate my teeth, then he tore one of his hands out of the Case 53’s chest and blindly lashed out, his arm trailing fire.

I threw myself to the ground, just barely avoiding the gout of flames, but my arm was positioned wrong and I landed on my right shoulder badly. The sharp spike of pain deep in my bones jarred me for a few heartbeats, then I came back to myself. I didn't think I broke anything or hit my head too hard, but now with my one trick expended I was pretty much defenseless.

I gracelessly scrambled to my feet and started running, but I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder to see what effect my attack had.

Lung was having more difficulty pinning down the Case 53 now that he couldn’t see what he was doing. Once the Case 53 forced enough of an opening, his entire outline blurred. He became a writhing mass of tendrils, pulling in his outer layer of burned skin and clothing and flowing around Lung’s claws, as if Lung was trying to grasp a stream of water. The Case 53 reformed himself like new, clothes and all, just outside of Lung’s grip. Adroitly rolling to his feet, the Case 53 drew back his right arm, fist clenched, just as Lung wrenched his claws out of the melting asphalt.

Several things happened at once. The actual punch was too fast for me to see, but for just an instant, I saw how the Case 53’s fist sank _through_ Lung’s chest, as if there was no resistance at all. Metal bent and thick bones cracked, and beneath the Case 53’s feet, the asphalt crumbled as tendrils kept the parahuman rooted in place. Lung was again launched across the street like he'd been fired from a cannon, this time at a lower angle. He skipped across the street like a stone across a lake and impacted against the first floor of the ABB members’ apartment building in a small explosion of dust, debris, and flame, leaving a huge hole in the wall.

I looked to the Case 53 to see how he was doing. His whole body was steaming in the night air, and even though he looked undamaged, he seemed incredibly fatigued. I chanced letting my power give me more information, and I found he had big gaps on his insides, hollow spaces strewn with a threadbare scaffolding of tendrils to shore them up. Whatever process he’d used to ‘repair’ himself only seemed to be redistributing the damage inward.

Lung reappeared in the hole, framed by flames that were already starting up inside the building. He stepped out of the building, revealing his sternum was a shattered ruin only held together by mangled metallic scales, but it was visibly regenerating. He repeatedly blinked the orange eye that I had sprayed, the other screwed tightly shut, and with a sinking feeling I realized I’d only bought us seconds with pepper spray that was supposed to last half an hour.

With an inhuman roar of challenge, Lung hunched forward and his back split apart, accommodating a new row of scales and muscle growth with the speed of flowing water. Two scaly mounds jutted out from his shoulders, reminding me of the wild rumors I’d read online that Lung could eventually grow wings. Lung straightened back up to his full, towering height, now taller than the first story of the apartment building, and rushed forward, faster than ever.

Snarling wordlessly, the Case 53 met Lung’s charge, but this time he couldn’t stand his ground. The tendrils he used to cling to the asphalt were uprooted by Lung’s immense strength and inertia, and without that grip, the Case 53 had no weight or leverage behind his strikes. In the contest of pure strength, Lung was finally winning. The two tore into each other with animalistic speed and ferocity, but the Case 53 was clearly losing.

I felt my dim hopes extinguish at the sight. This was not going to end well. Lung simply didn't _have_ an upper limit. The Case 53 was being shredded by claws and blasted with fire, hemmed in from all sides. Lung had grown so big that his opponent couldn’t even strike past the length of Lung’s elbows, much less hit Lung’s body. The Case 53 could only try to hit and parry Lung’s limbs, which didn’t send him flying like before. Even as I watched, though, Lung’s blows started to become clumsier, and the flagging Case 53 managed to get a few more good hits in, crushing scales and breaking bones.

Then, out of _nowhere,_ a gigantic lizard-shaped monster landed on the street with a huge crash that shook the ground. I’d depleted my swarm so much I hadn’t even noticed it approaching. The bony, sinewy leopard-lizard-thing came barreling up the street and before I could even comprehend my impending death, it went right past me, close enough that I was buffeted by the wind of its passage. It plowed into Lung, grabbing his arm in its jaws and knocking the charred Case 53 aside like a child’s toy. Lung struggled to free his arm and slashed at the monster’s head with his claws, causing the monster to rear away with an unearthly howl.

I didn’t waste time staring at the spectacle. I took the unexpected opportunity to run.

I made it halfway down the block before my escape was cut short by the arrival of two more monsters. Each held a pair of costumed riders, two girls and two guys from the looks of it. They slid off their mounts, and one of them, a stocky, homeless-looking girl with short auburn hair and wearing a Rottweiler mask, gave a sharp whistle. The two skinless creatures bolted off to join the fight against Lung, surrounding him and baiting him like hunting dogs around a boar. The Case 53 had staggered away, burned and blackened into an unrecognizable silhouette by Lung’s flames, and even though he’d been given a reprieve, he wasn’t running away or healing back to normal.

I jogged to a stop in front of the new group, trembling and aching all over.

One of them, a tall man clad in black motorcycle leather and wearing a black skull helmet, stepped forward. He looked exactly the opposite of his frilly ren-faire costumed teammate.

“Hey. Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?” he asked in a deep, masculine voice that was a little muffled by the skull-patterned helmet.

I had no idea what to say to these people, so I defaulted to silently shaking my head.

“Can you speak? You, uh, you might be in shock—hell, I nearly had a heart attack myself when I heard Lung was coming after us, but it looks like you and the other guy did a number on him, and Bitch has the rest well in hand. You’re safe now, okay?”

I knew I should probably say something, but in that moment I was just amazed at how soothing and calm he sounded, especially for someone wearing a black skull helmet and standing on the fringes of an active cape fight.

Skull-mask was still waiting for an answer, so I spoke up. “I’m not hurt too bad. I’ll be okay.”

He nodded, relaxing his posture a bit. He leaned over, looking past me to take in the fight. He spoke without turning to look at me. “Jesus Christ. How is your friend even still alive? I think I can see _through_ him in places. Tattletale?”

“The new guy’s a regenerator, but he’s pretty much at his limit right now. Not much we can do aside from keeping the fight away from him. Also, they’re not actually a team,” the second girl said, answering the question for me. She was dressed in a skintight black outfit and domino mask with pale blue or purple accents—I couldn't really tell in the dark—and she had long, dark blond hair. She frowned and added, "Lung is pretty far into his transformation, but he’s not doing too well either. There’s a whole bunch of different venoms in his system, thanks to our friend here, and it’s really starting to get to him. His regeneration isn’t fast enough to filter it all out, and he’d need to be even bigger than he is now to dilute it enough.”

The man in black suddenly turned to look at me. “Introductions. That’s Tattletale, I’m Grue. The girl with the dogs—” he pointed to the other girl, the dog-masked one who had whistled and directed the monsters. “—We call her Bitch, her preference, but the heroes call her Hellhound. Last, we have Regent.”

“Last but not least,” Regent said, idly twirling a scepter in his hand. He looked like he was much more interested in watching Lung getting mauled by the monsters.

My brain struggled to process this conversation, comprehension lagging a few words behind. I was still in fight-or-die mode. Then it caught up to me that these mutant monsters they'd been riding were _dogs_.

After a few uncomfortable seconds, Grue leaned in a little closer to me. “Hey, are you sure you’re okay?”

“That's not why she hasn't introduced herself. She's shy,” Tattletale said with a grin. “Oh—and the extra crispy guy over there is moving. He’s about to try something.”

My train of thought derailed at that. Wait, how did she know all these things?

Tattletale's mouth thinned into a tense line. “I... huh. Hold up. Bitch, call off the dogs.”

Bitch's head whipped around to look at her teammate.

“Just do it. Venom or no, Lung’s too far into his transformation for the dogs to bring him down before he kills one of them, and I'm not liking the vibe this new guy is giving off. He’s losing control.” Tattletale said, all traces of levity gone from her voice. She sounded genuinely worried, which was a jarring contrast to her earlier, almost singsong tone. “Grue, we gotta scram. This fight is only going to get uglier, and we've got another cape incoming.”

Bitch gave a high-pitched whistle, one short and two long, and the dog-monsters disengaged from Lung. He was much worse off, badly mauled and seeming almost dazed. He was getting smaller, and his flames were weaker than before. The Case 53 tackled him, and they began fighting just as viciously as before, but now Lung’s injuries were really hindering him, so neither of them really had the upper hand. In a few massive bounds the dogs returned, and the team began to saddle up.

Lung seemed to give up on trading blows and instead rammed the Case 53 into the apartment building, just as he had been before, and followed him inside. Lung stoked the fires already burning in the building, seemingly intent on burning down the Case 53 along with it, and I lost sight of the two even as I felt the Case 53’s presence still fighting inside.

Grue’s voice startled me from my observations. He was looking down at me from his perch atop one of the mutated dogs, and I belatedly realized he’d been talking to me. “Hey, want a ride?” he asked.

I took one look at the nightmarish, oozing, flayed-looking abomination of muscle and bone spurs, and shook my head.

“Hey,” said Tattletale, seating herself behind Bitch, “What's your name?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, “I, uh, haven't decided yet.”

“Well, Bug, you did us a solid by helping us against Lung, so take my advice,” Tattletale said, fixing me with a serious look. “Those two are determined to finish this fight, with or without you. Nothing you can do about it now. Trust me, one way or the other, you do not want to be here to get mixed up in that mess, much less when more capes arrive.”

I felt a chill at that.

There was no time to ask for more details. Bitch whistled again and the dogs charged down the street, leaping to the rooftops and then disappearing.

I looked back at the apartment building, which was now fully ablaze, and I felt the waning presence of the Case 53 inside. Still fighting, still dying.

Tattletale was right. There was nothing more I could do. He’d had his chance to run, but he’d chosen to keep fighting instead.

I hesitated for only a moment, then I burst into a full sprint. I ran, and no amount of logic eased the terrible guilt twisting inside me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we visit the penultimate Station of Canon for this fic. One station down, one to go before Taylor makes a choice that departs from canon completely. I hope I did enough to make this ubiquitous fight seem fresh. Thanks for reading, and please let me know where you think this is going! I love reading your theories and speculation.


	3. Incubation 1.3

**Incubation 1.3**  
  
The fire abated. Sight and sound came back, just a little. He could see the reason the fire had stopped.  
  
The reprieve was torturous in itself. He tried to pull himself together, but there was too much damage, too much _emptiness,_ like he had split himself apart to hold himself up. He could feel in minute, agonizing detail every bit of damage to his body—the tiny hissing bubbles of fluid that were boiling out of the split in his denuded scalp, the chunk of his right arm that was flaking away, the landscape of ruin that was his back, and the few restraining tendrils that were holding closed the charred remains of his stomach.  
  
He couldn’t move like he wanted to, he couldn’t even _think_ properly. He consumed the most-destroyed parts of himself, but that only helped a little. Delaying the inevitable, only gaining back part of what was lost. There was a word for it. Thermo... something. Entropy? Words didn’t matter. He couldn’t even remember his own name, and he didn’t care.  
  
The burning man had gotten smaller, his movements growing slow and confused. His fire was guttering out. The building still burned all around them, but the focused flames they had been engulfed in had lost cohesion.  
  
The pain and hunger blended together into one agonizing drive that consumed him, rekindling his urge to _move_ and _fight_. Even through the pall of smoke filling the building, he could smell the thing he needed. It was so _close—_ the impossibly captivating smell that was forcing him not to succumb to the pain, the one that was promising salvation. He rose to his feet on legs that were crumbling into ash, preparing to tear into the burning man, who was also struggling to push himself upright.  
  
A dim awareness flashed across his fragmented mind that the smell was coming from the burning man.  
  
He tackled the burning man, brutalizing him with his fists even as his hands cracked and crumbled away with every blow, oozing a red and black tar. The burning man fought back, clumsily, his shredded limbs knitting together at a much slower pace. The claws of the burning man gouged into his ribs, his face, his eye.  
  
He didn’t care. He was furious. _Ravenous_.  
  
The burning man collapsed under a frenzy of blows, falling to the ground, the flame finally flickering out. But that didn’t stop the beating, didn’t even slow it down. Blood began to splatter over his fists, and—  
  
 _Taste_  
  
Sensation, relief, and _life_ flooded back into him, racing up from the blood on his arms like a jolt of electricity. Pleasure as intense as the pain, and just as overwhelming. The metallic flavor of the blood was _amazing_ but it wasn’t _enough,_ just a drop of water on a parched tongue, a gulp of air in drowning lungs.  
  
His arms unraveled from sheer desperation, coming apart like frayed threads. Each individual part of him abandoned its connection to the others, lunging forwards like dozens of snakes all striking at once, collapsing onto the burning man in a frenzy. His mind came fully apart, and there was no more _him,_ only _them_.  
  
They moved with pure instinct and desperation, cutting and burrowing into flesh, bristling and branching and subsuming, competing with each other for each precious scrap of life. They were fighting each other for more of the sheer, glorious relief, but with each passing second, they calmed as they felt the pain easing away. Each did what came naturally to them, following the instinct to recreate the shape of what they had consumed.  
  
Then, contact—a shattered perspective, a kaleidoscopic mix of fragmentary thoughts and senses, all happening at once. The perspectives blended together, synchronized at the points of contact with each other, and the mental separations erased, _their_ minds fusing to become _his_ mind once again.  
  
No sooner had mental unity returned than there came an explosion of memories, the sheer magnitude of them obliterating all perception of time, place, and sensation. It was an instantaneous outpouring of an entire lifetime, not coming in chronological order but as the single, titanic architecture of connections and experiences that constituted a mind. The memories were unfathomably more vast and complex than any consciousness could comprehend at once, leaving him utterly scattered and disoriented, trying to find his way back to when and where he was. More importantly, _who_ he was.  
  
As simple as knowing the question, he knew the answer, in its totality. He knew hardship, victory, and defeat. He knew how to command power and fear and reputation. Always surviving day by day, always building up to something greater, even when there were setbacks. Implacable perseverance.  
  
He was Lung. He was Kenta. He was the burning man.  
  
There was a discordant note, momentary confusion. He had never referred to himself as the burning man. That had been the name given to Lung by the _other,_ but never spoken aloud. Lung could remember the fight he’d just had from two different perspectives, one from himself and one from the other, whose recollection was hazy, indistinct, and even more feral than Lung’s own. It was nothing more than an animal in the end.  
  
The last thing Lung remembered was the pain of being torn to shreds by those dozens of horrible, lashing, eel-like things. And it made no sense. It didn’t belong. His body was _wrong._ He could feel his mask like it was an extension of his face, and his insides were condensing and splitting apart into tentacles, growing hungrier already, and his power—  
  
 _His power was gone._  
  
Lung had never been able to control the changes, not fully. However, he’d always been able to feel the fire he could call at will, and all the fires around him, ever since Daiichi and his gang had been decimated by the woman in the suit who had crushed his face into the drugs. He’d carried the weight of that moment for the rest of his life, turned it into his strength.  
  
And now it was gone.  
  
 _No_. He was still Lung, Kenta, the dragon, the burning man. He had sworn he would never lose, not in the end. He had fallen before, but he had always come back again, stronger than before.  
  
A loud _snap_ startled Lung from his confused thoughts. The roof sagged and crumbled, sending a rain of dust and ceiling plaster down on Lung’s head, making the smoke-filled ruin even harder to see through. A part of the roof collapsed in the center of what had once been an apartment, and Lung reflexively backed away from the falling, flaming timbers.  
  
He had to get out before the building collapsed or the fire consumed him. He was no longer immune to the flames.  
  
The way out was blocked, but strength came easily to him in this new form. He simply battered through the wall into the neighboring apartment. This one had been repurposed into a storehouse for Lung’s local drug distributors, with folding card tables set up, holding ordered piles of drugs and loose cash. The fire hadn’t reached here yet, but smoke was already pouring into the room from the hole Lung had made. His incompetent underlings had all been drawn away in his aborted attempt to muster forces to reinforce Oni Lee and kill the Undersiders, or they were lying defeated outside, so no one was around to save the product from the fire.  
  
Inconvenient, but Lung didn’t care to do it himself. He’d take his recompense from the ones who had failed him.  
  
Lung went to the drawer in the corner of the room and opened it. All his locations had stores of clothes, simply because any fight of consequence always left himself naked, as he was now. He’d long since stopped caring, but clothes made escaping the Protectorate’s notice easier, and with normal clothes and a hood or sunglasses, he was able to blend in surprisingly well when it suited him, despite his size and unnatural eye color.  
  
As he got out a pair of jeans, though, and noticed they were far too small, Lung realized for the first time that he wasn’t shrinking as he should. In fact, he hadn’t shrunk at all, even though the fight was over. He still stood seven feet tall and had his claws, plus a few patches of scales along his spine, chest, shins, and forearms. The scales weren’t moving or receding at all.  
  
He was stuck like this. The same form he had possessed when he—

Died.  
  
 _No_. He hadn’t died. He’d been absorbed. Assimilated. Consumed. But he’d still come out on top in the end.  
  
But he was not alone. He was also the _other_. Alex Mercer. Or he had _been_ him. He was both at the same time. How could that be? The scope of Lung’s lifetime was incomparably greater than the man who was a stranger even to himself, but despite the fact that those memories of being Alex were like a bare instant in comparison, they were still _there_. Impossible to deny. Growing clearer.  
  
Lung tossed aside the jeans. He had to think. There must be a way to bring his power back.  
  
The memory of his trigger event loomed in his mind, a well-worn groove in his thoughts. Normally Lung held it at bay with promises of vengeance, but for the sake of getting his powers, he was willing to do anything. Even if that meant forcing himself to relive it.  
  
Lung closed his eyes, and remembered the weight of the woman bodyguard pressing down on his head, holding him against the powder, suffocating him. He remembered the rush of the drug, exploding in his mind, carrying him away without limits. Overdosing. The contradictory euphoric might and total powerlessness. His heart frantically, painfully beating away as though it would burst out of his ribcage or tear itself apart. The spreading numbness in his left side. The icy, seizing terror as he realized he was dying of a heart attack.  
  
Lung’s hands shook, even from the recollection of it. He clenched his fists, his long metallic claws lying flush against his wrists.  
  
This wasn’t working. His trigger—reliving it wasn’t granting his power back.  
  
Lung knew, or at least suspected the reason. His body wasn’t supposed to be this mass of tentacles inside. He wasn’t supposed to have this _presence_ in his head, telling him where all the parts of himself were at all times, channeling strange, intrusive information and urges into his mind. Lung somehow _remembered_ what his body should be, down to the very last minute detail, even though his current body didn’t have enough material left over after it had finished absorbing him to restore his insides. They had been left half-finished, patched up by a lattice of writhing flesh swimming in the fluids his body had wrung out of itself as it had coalesced.  
  
Lung could never have understood his own body in such detail before, but now he could remember Alex Mercer just as well. His self was overlaid with a another image, a mental concept that carried not only image but also its own sort of _flavor,_ something completely different. Alex and Lung. Two bodies, so familiar. They were both equally vivid in his mind’s eye, but only one of them was _wrong_.  
  
Feeling a deep despair come over him, Lung’s façade of invulnerability slipped for just a moment. He knew it was hopeless. Everyone would eventually know Lung’s power had changed. That he’d _lost_.  
  
Lung couldn’t accept that. So he didn’t. Another part of him did.  
  
Alex Mercer.  
  
Lung could feel the presence weighing on his mind, growing in strength as Lung’s resolve weakened. He could remember _being_ Alex, however briefly, and each time he thought of the other, the stronger the presence grew. It was a mind that was ordered, sharp, and analytical in a way that was impossible to ignore. Part of Lung yearned to abandon his turbulent emotions and feel that cold clarity again, but he hadn’t noticed it taking hold until it was too late to stop.  
  
Lung could feel his own sense of self falling away, the mental territory being reclaimed by the other personality. It felt like dying again. Sinking to the bottom of the ocean.  
  
It didn’t matter anymore. He was more than just Lung. Lung had lost, and _he_ had won. He took the correct form and pushed it outwards, and just like that, his body reformed just as it had been, even down to the facsimile of clothes. He hadn’t even really intended for that to happen, but it was how he had remembered himself, so it did.  
  
Alex stared down at himself. Leather jacket, hoodie, dress shirt, jeans. It was all false, just a feeling, a _memory,_ expressed as a physical shape. His body and mind were no less arbitrary, artificial constructions than his clothes, he realized, and the thought briefly disturbed him on an existential level.  
  
Alex slid his hand down his sleeve as if to make sure it was real, for a given value of real. The leather and fabric _felt_ real enough. For just a moment, Alex missed the achingly familiar dragon tattoos etched into his skin. Alex had only thought he was Lung in his confusion, but the truth was that Lung was gone, and his ambitions and revenge would forever go unfulfilled. It felt incomplete, and the last fragment of him that he thought of as ‘Lung’ felt a profound pang of loss before Alex subsumed it entirely.  
  
As that echo of grief evaporated, Alex was again struck by the sheer _impossibility_ of what had just occurred. This was beyond mere insanity or drug-induced hallucination. What he experienced was paradoxically too much for him to truly believe he was insane. Drugs or madness couldn’t invent an entire lifetime’s worth of memories out of nowhere. Absolutely _nothing_ was commensurate with that sensation. Alex clearly wasn’t human, so what _was_ he? As soon as it occurred to Alex to consider the question, Lung’s memories supplied an answer, as if it were a piece of trivia he’d momentarily forgotten. Alex was a parahuman, just like the bug cape had said earlier.  
  
That explanation seemed like it should have made perfect sense, but in another dissonant contradiction, what he now thought of as the ‘original’ Alex felt like he had never heard of parahumans before tonight. Lung’s memories provided more than enough familiarity and details to compensate, though. Lung was obviously one of them, and had known all about them. That seemed unbelievable to Alex, it struck him as fundamentally _wrong,_ yet Lung’s memories and the evidence before him were incontrovertible.  
  
Parahumans had been around for decades. The first one, Scion, had appeared in 1982, manifesting not unlike a physical God come to Earth—a silent and mysterious golden man hovering above the ocean, naked as the day he was born. No one had known what he was at first, until other powers began manifesting in ordinary humans during the greatest crisis of their life, the trigger event that turned a human into a parahuman. Their powers were bizarre, and people speculated they were extraterrestrial or even supernatural in origin, but either way, they were undeniably real. Parahumans had become common knowledge to the public from the first contact with Scion, and no one doubted their existence after the tumultuous first few years when they started to emerge from secrecy in increasing numbers.  
  
To put it in terms Alex was more familiar with, he was a superpowered mass of shapeshifting tendrils. The thought would have seemed a lot more strange to the Alex of fifteen minutes ago, but Lung's memories implied that Alex’s circumstances weren’t actually something particularly unusual in the parahuman world. Case 53s were rare even among the ranks of parahumans, which themselves only numbered roughly one in every ten thousand humans, but the condition was hardly unheard of.  
  
Everything had been neatly explained, an answer had been found, but after everything he’d just gone through, the revelation only left Alex feeling numb. Compared to the experience of getting an entire separate person’s memories branded into his mind, this revelation was nothing. He could have dwelled on what had happened to him for years, but there was still one question left unresolved.  
  
 _Now what?_  
  
Alex needed time to think, but he had already been absorbed in himself for too long. How long had he been in here? Two minutes? Five? It was long enough to fill the room with more smoke, and for the fires to begin to encroach on the hole he’d made. So much had happened to him all at once it was almost impossible to tell time.  
  
Regardless, this fight had probably attracted more attention than a fireworks display. Even in a slum like this, where the police response time was probably somewhere between 'eventually' and 'never,' there was no way something like this would be ignored. Alex had no reason to stick around. While he was thinking of potential incoming dangers, Lung's memories informed him that a parahuman organization called the Protectorate was probably sending superheroes this way.  
  
Time to go.  
  
Alex paused for just a moment to shovel two handfuls of loose cash from one of the tables into his jacket pocket. Then he was out the back door and into the back alleys of Brockton Bay again, this time with all of Lung’s knowledge of his territory branded into his head. Alex knew exactly where to go to avoid the main streets and escape the sounds of incoming sirens, and he broke into a sprint.  
  
In an instant, he was already traveling faster than most cars did in the city. With a shift that felt almost as autonomous as breathing, his feet and lower shins broke out into tendrils that pierced into the pavement as though it were soft loam, giving him the extra grip he needed to practically fling himself forward. As he came up against the limit of air resistance and pressed himself to go even faster, his body reacted again to give him what he needed. The outer edges of his arms and legs rippled and broke apart into a blur of incredibly fast-moving tendrils that took in air, compressed it in the space of an instant, and shot it out along with a trail of fine red mist like hundreds of tiny jet engines, giving him a massive boost in thrust.  
  
Alex’s strides stretched out over twenty, thirty feet as he ran, and the cold night air whipped over his whole body, howling in his ears along with the rushing noise his arms and legs made as they created their own slipstream. The sheer power and freedom felt _incredible_.  
  
Once he felt he was far enough away, Alex slowed down and started winding through the abandoned dockyards, almost shaking with energy.  
  
The speed of his movement was liberating, and he yearned to start sprinting again, but held himself back to a fast walk for subtlety’s sake. At least the slow pace would allow him to think about his powers and consider his next steps.  
  
Looking at his fight objectively, Alex hadn’t been as strong as Lung had been at his peak. It stung his pride to admit, but that much was undeniable, having full experience with both sides. However, even the fact that his power was comparable to Lung’s _at all_ was noteworthy. Though Lung has deliberately hidden the true extent of his powers, he was still considered by most to be the single strongest parahuman in Brockton Bay, and that was really saying something in a city that was disproportionately infested with capes.  
  
Complicating the comparison, though, was the fact that Alex now felt much stronger and more whole than he did when he woke up, no doubt a consequence of consuming Lung. How much further could he go, and how much more powerful could he get? Would it be enough to survive another encounter like this?  
  
A memory surfaced of Lung reasoning that the only reason the superheroes hadn't already put him six feet under or in the Birdcage, the jail for parahumans, was because Lung was simply too powerful to bother with, and he had mostly targeted criminals. Also, he had proven useful against the Endbri—  
  
Alex stumbled mid-step and very nearly tripped. He froze in place as his new memories filled him in on the world’s collective nightmare.  
  
Holy mother of _fuck!_  
  
Alex felt a cold chill running down his spine. He remembered Lung’s cataclysmic duel with that _thing_ in November of 1999. It was amazing that Alex could have overlooked the memory even for a minute, but it wasn’t like he had the mental capacity to unpack all of Lung’s mind at once. Now, though, it was hard _not_ to think about the battle. He could almost feel the phantom sensation of the Endbringer’s giant claws effortlessly carving through his scales and flesh, hear the deafening roar of the entire island of Kyushu crumbling into the raging sea, and picture the explosive clash of flame and water as they fought. Worst of all, Alex remembered Lung’s empty sense of futility, which had ultimately halted his power’s escalation. It felt like part of him was still there, almost like how PTSD flashbacks were described, but one step removed.  
  
Alex shook his head to clear his mind. That vivid recollection had felt strange.  
  
Apparently there was now some degree of separation between the memories of Lung and Alex. That was a relief, considering just how emotionally fucked up Lung had been. If Alex’s hypothesis was correct, he had inhabited Lung’s _brain_ while he was inside his body, and that was why he’d temporarily thought he was Lung. The fact that Alex’s consciousness was now safely ensconced in his original brain was probably what allowed him to remain removed from Lung’s personality and emotions, even though the semantic and episodic memories of Lung had been copied over and added to his own.  
  
At least it seemed safe to view those memories now. Alex didn’t feel like anyone but himself, even if most of his memories didn’t belong to him. Lung’s memories only seemed to occur to Alex following his natural train of thought. They were reactive, not proactive, with no anticipation of what information Alex might need. That had the potential to be _dangerously_ inconvenient, considering he’d initially missed the existence of Endbringers while thinking about parahumans, when by all rights, they should have been the very _first_ things he thought of. On the other hand, that reactionary memory was also probably the only reason that Alex wasn’t a comatose vegetable or a delusional Lung clone right now.  
  
Alex didn't feel quite so powerful anymore, not after learning about those _things_. Whatever he was now, he didn't measure up to the real powers in the world. He was one shark in a vast, dangerous ocean, but he was a shark nonetheless. The only certainty in life was that anything, at any moment, might rise up out of the depths and eat him, so he just had to make sure he ate them first. It was an appealing prospect.  
  
 _Damn it, this hunger is so distracting,_ Alex thought to himself.  
  
With nothing better to do, Alex started looking for something to eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who might still be confused as to what happened with Lung’s personality nearly taking over, essentially the virus was so damaged and reduced that it could no longer maintain the simulation of Alex Mercer’s mind and personality, and as a result Alex nearly turned himself into another James Heller on accident, only this time with Lung. Once his body had regenerated enough, though, Lung’s original central nervous system and memories were no longer the only game in town, and as a result the original personality resurfaced from within the Blacklight network’s parallel subconscious.


	4. Incubation 1.4

**Incubation 1.4**  
  
After leaving the battle to go lose himself in the industrial ruins of the Docks, Alex was met with an unpleasant surprise when he realized his wallet was no longer on his person.  
  
Alex didn’t even bother checking his pockets, his enhanced proprioception already informed him it was pointless. The reassuring lump that had been present in his left jeans pocket when he’d woken up was gone. At a guess, when he’d consumed his outer layer, the wallet had already been a casualty to Lung’s flames. As a result, Alex didn’t have a usable pattern to copy, so his transformation process didn’t even bother trying to copy it, for lack of a better description.  
  
The loss of his wallet was a heavy blow, since it carried his only I.D., but at least it informed Alex that his shapeshifting power didn’t work by using the platonic ideal of a thing from his memories and copying it. He was able to almost subconsciously “fix” his mental templates to remove damage and injuries, but only by sampling bits and pieces of the template from elsewhere and filling in the blanks with some idea of what the undamaged template should look like. Strictly speaking, the original template of his own clothes were the burned and slashed ones he’d consumed, but the new template of undamaged clothes he wore now were as much reconstructed as they were directly copied over.  
  
The rules Alex’s power worked by were frustrating and seemingly contradictory. For instance, he had never once seen the stitched pattern on the back of his jacket, a decoration that resembled stylized wings, but he still knew it was there because he’d consumed the burned fragments that remained of it. He didn’t even know what color it was, but he’d still managed to fix it by mirroring the pattern from the other half.  
  
The amazing thing was that his power had fixed the pattern almost completely autonomously while doing countless other tasks concurrently, only working from the directive of a split-second’s panicked need to be whole and undamaged. Alex’s power was less like a thing he was controlling himself, and more like a system with its own agency that was interpreting his vague mental commands and desires.  
  
Unlike his jacket’s decoration, Alex had actually _seen_ and interacted with his wallet, though, so it seemed mightily unfair that it wasn’t showing up in his power’s proprioception-template of himself. The hypothesis was as obvious as it was inconvenient: as far as his shapeshifting was concerned, if Alex didn’t consume something, his power had no template to work with.  
  
_Like hell._ He wasn’t going to take that lying down, not without at least testing it first.  
  
Alex put his search for food on hold for a minute and attempted to recreate his driver’s license in the palm of his right hand from memory. That led to the second unpleasant surprise in as many minutes.  
  
Despite focusing as hard as he could, Alex only managed to make his tendrils squiggle around for a few moments and grudgingly form into an uneven, rigid square that felt vaguely like plastic and had a trippy jumble of words and images on it. The colors were wonky, and the details were extremely sharp in some areas, yet blurry in others. It could only be described as the closest thing to a frozen instant of unreliable memory made manifest, which was more or less exactly what it was. The card was so incredibly bad it probably would have qualified as a piece of priceless impressionistic artwork.  
  
“Eat your heart out, Vincent van Gogh,” Alex muttered sardonically, trying to peel the thing off of him to get a look at the reverse side.  
  
The card stubbornly refused to come loose. It was like trying to rip off a fingernail. It didn’t have any nerve endings, but it hurt at the interface when Alex tried to remove it. He gave up and returned his hand to normal.  
  
New hypothesis: what was made from part of Alex’s body wanted to stay a part of Alex’s body.  
  
Ducking into a dark corner by a warehouse, Alex attempted to test whether that maxim applied to his clothing. He attempted to remove his jacket, only to realize that it and the layers beneath it were stuck to his shoulders and upper arms. Likewise, his shoes and socks were actually attached to his feet, and his jeans and underwear were attached to his hips as if he’d used a band of superglue instead of a belt. It looked and felt like normal constant skin contact with his clothes, but it was just as attached as the card had been.  
  
Alex could vaguely remember stories of the skin of extremely sedentary people becoming fused with clothes or furniture, but it was a lot more disturbing when something similar happened to him. Fortunately, a quick adjustment of his shapeshifting revealed he could remove any layer in any order at will, and Lung had been naked except for his mask, so at least Alex knew he wouldn’t be stuck with his current outfit forever, not that he really cared. He also discovered that his power made zero distinction between his skin and clothes; he could manifest a two-foot-long tendril out of his shoulder and instead of tearing or piercing through the jacket, the surface would seamlessly transition from nerveless clothes to tactile, fully mobile tendril.  
  
Alex stared at the new, boneless appendage, getting a good look at what his insides were composed of for the first time. He should have been freaking out, but oddly, he wasn’t. It was still a part of him, after all, and it was under his complete control. The tendril was predominantly black, streaked with veins of red. It consisted of loosely coiled strands, the smallest no thicker than a piece of twine, all flowing into and through one another like a liquid. It seemed fragile, almost, like it was made of molten glass.  
  
At that thought, the tendril suddenly bristled with sharp points and silvery, bladed protrusions, responding to Alex’s feeling that the tendril was too unprotected. It now resembled a thorny vine that had been sculpted out of melted knives and nails. It was strangely beautiful, in an organic yet alien way. His eyes widened in amazement, and he experimentally poked a thorn with his thumb, revealing they were sharp enough to easily break skin with the softest contact. He hadn’t intended for that to happen, but somehow manifesting the tendril externally felt more natural this way than bare.  
  
Alex retracted the tendril and tried making one sprout only out of his clothes, not his skin.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
He tried again elsewhere, with no success. It probably had something to do with the clothes’ lack of nerves—he had to have contiguous sensation to manifest his tendrils. The clothes were basically static until he started actively shapeshifting, but they were still a living part of him. They were less like dead strands of hair, and more like paralyzed, clothing-textured folds of skin.  
  
Alex took advantage of the lack of feeling and tried tearing off the lower front corner of his white dress shirt, but even as strong as he was, it felt more difficult than it should have been. The instant he ripped the piece off, the torn edges bled out more red-tinged tar that formed the correct shape, changed texture, and shifted color to white, all in less than a second.  
  
Disconnected from the rest of him, the piece of shirt in Alex’s hand slowly melted from white pseudo-cloth into more of that black-and-red goo. It clung to his fingers, which hungrily reabsorbed the stuff. His attention was returned to his pangs of hunger by the addictive sensation. He needed to absorb more, and eating bits of himself obviously wasn’t a viable option.  
  
Experimenting with his power had given Alex a kind of mental clarity and focus that he’d been lacking before, and it was a damn sight better than wondering which tangled thoughts were his own, but he couldn’t continue this while he was so distracted by hunger. Further experimentation could wait until after he’d eaten. And taken a leak, for that matter.  
  
It didn’t take long for Alex to find what he was looking for.  
  
The blue glow of a run-down 24-hour gas station caught his attention off in the distance. Perfect. Fortunately, he still had the two loose handfuls of cash he’d grabbed from the ABB storehouse, so he at least wouldn’t attract notice with a robbery. Alex didn’t dare count the money while walking out in the open, lest he invite a mugging attempt—though the prospect of foiling thieves with his new powers was appealing, it ran into the same issue of drawing too much attention.  
  
At least his clothes didn’t look like a crime scene now.  
  
Alex went inside the gas station. At this hour of night it was completely abandoned, save for himself and a sleepy septuagenarian man sitting behind a counter encased in grimy bulletproof glass, reading a book. Alex idly wondered whether the cage was there more to protect the employee, or to protect the cigarettes on the wall behind him.  
  
Alex took a few steps inside the dingy, fluorescent-lit convenience store, then stopped.  
  
There was that delicious aroma again. He’d faintly smelled it out in the streets every now and again, and he’d assumed it was just the smell of some unidentified, savory food. He’d smelled it much more strongly when confronted by the gangsters, but he’d been too preoccupied by the mortal threat to really be paying attention to a salivating scent. Here it was older, more stale, but it reminded him of the same aroma that drove him to consume Lung.  
  
_Fuck_. Alex was smelling _people,_ wasn’t he? To say that was an ominous sign would be an understatement. He could smell the food, too, but it seemed normal, even plain by comparison. It didn’t affect him like the aroma of people did.  
  
Shaking his head, Alex made a beeline for the hot food section, feeling apprehension start to coil in his gut along with the hunger. Along the way, he noticed that the bathroom door had a lock and a sign on it that said PAYING CUSTOMERS ONLY.  
  
Alex resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the various signs of Brockton Bay’s urban decay and pulled out one of the two wads of bills he’d stuffed in his pockets. He was pleased to find it was all fives, tens, and a few twenties, maybe a bit over two hundred dollars’ worth. He kept a crumpled ten in his hand and put away the rest, then surveyed what was on offer.  
  
The mummified hot dogs rolling in their incubator were obviously out, and he was way too hungry to settle for the various packages of candy bars, nuts, and chips. Alex chose a greasy paper box of fried chicken and a banana that didn’t have too many spots on it, plus a bottle of water. That should tide him over at least until morning.  
  
Alex went to the register and impatiently shifted from foot to foot as the pug-faced cashier rang him up.  
  
“Three forty-five is your change,” the old man said, dropping three silver dollars, four dimes, and a nickel into the metal transaction tray under the bulletproof glass barrier.  
  
Alex scooped up his change and took his purchase, heading out. He fished in the box of fried chicken and grabbed a lukewarm drumstick, taking a bite as he pushed open the door of the convenience store.  
  
The third unpleasant surprise of Alex’s experimentation came when he tried to swallow. His insides were so threadbare that he didn’t really have a _stomach_ as such, because most of his body’s substance in his upper torso had been diverted to shore up the lungs, spine, ribs, and larynx. As a result, his food just kind of fell down into his upper abdominal cavity, until he made a conscious effort to consume it with his tendrils instead of waiting on a digestive process that clearly wasn’t in the cards.  
  
The hits just kept coming, though. His tendrils broke down the food in a moment, but Alex didn’t gain anything from it. No, that wasn’t quite right—he could feel that the tendril which absorbed the food felt a little less fatigued, for lack of a better word, but the sensation was already fading fast, and he couldn’t feel his body’s substance multiplying from the food. Not like with Lung. It was _that_ particular hunger which demanded satisfaction—the need to consume, grow, and repair the rest of the damage to his body.  
  
Alex rapidly finished the rest of the chicken, and then the banana, but to no avail. The food was more analogous to drinking water than to eating. His body wasn’t making more of itself like it did when it was consuming Lung. _Why?_  
  
A cold dread come over Alex, the nameless suspicion looming in his mind, but he didn’t want to even acknowledge his growing certainty until he’d exhausted all other possibilities.  
  
Alex distractedly uncapped his water bottle and raised it to his lips, taking a swig as much to calm himself down as to find out how his body reacted to water.  
  
That led to the fourth unpleasant surprise.  
  
Alex coughed and sputtered as the water started to sting and burn on the way down, settling in his gut like he’d swallowed acid. He retched, his tendrils forcibly expelling the water out of his mouth, then gasped and coughed as some went down his porous throat and into his lungs instead.  
  
“Augh! What the _hell?!”_ Alex cursed, bracing his hands on his knees, the water bottle crumpled in his right hand. He was glad that no one had been around to see that display.  
  
Once the stinging had died away and he finished coughing, Alex raised the water bottle to his nose and took a suspicious sniff.  
  
It didn’t smell like anything harmful. It just smelled like the chemicals they put into godawful municipal tap water, and the plastic of the bottle. In other words, it smelled like normal bottled water. Alex poured some out onto his left hand, and it felt for all the world like normal water. No stinging.  
  
_Okay, this demands further examination,_ he thought to himself. If fucking _water_ of all things turned out to be Alex’s kryptonite, he’d just die.  
  
Alex marched back into the convenience store and grabbed the things he might need. A can of coke to test whether he’d react to strong carbonic acid and sugar. A bottle of cranberry juice to test whether different acids and sugars behaved any differently. A bottle of alkalized spring water to test which end of the pH scale he was having trouble with. A pint carton of milk, just for the sake of diversity and a more neutral pH.  
  
On a whim, Alex noted the camera in the corner of the ceiling and turned away, letting his arm come apart and slipping the more expensive bottle of alkalized water into a pocket he created in his body. The cashier didn’t even look up, much less notice Alex’s subtle act of parahuman sleight-of-hand.  
  
The old man raised an eyebrow at Alex as he rung up the new purchase. “Feeling thirsty?”  
  
Alex grunted noncommittally, paying for the three items he hadn’t stolen and leaving again in a hurry.  
  
This time, Alex lurked behind the chain-link fence housing the store’s dumpster, for peace and privacy just in case someone passed by.  
  
The first thing Alex sampled was the coke. In something of an anticlimax, the most acidic of the beverages by far tasted completely normal to him, and even energized him a little, just like the food did. He downed the rest and wondered whether the independent variable was the calories, but then again, that wouldn’t explain why the water’s lack of calories would make it feel acidic. It hadn’t been all that painful, either, more startling than anything else.  
  
Next, Alex tried the milk. That refreshed him noticeably more than the coke did, and also felt and tasted completely normal. Score one for the calorie hypothesis—milk had roughly twice the calories of coke per unit volume.  
  
The cranberry juice was all but indistinguishable from the coke, in every way except taste and effervescence.  
  
Lastly, Alex uncapped the alkalized water, eyeing it dubiously. He wasn’t looking forward to this. Sure enough, the tiny sip he took burned like acid, or something spicy, as soon as it reached the tendrils inside him. His mouth felt no different, just the tendrils, and the feeling vanished almost as soon as it had arisen.  
  
Alex checked his surroundings again, making sure he was alone. He was, so he ducked back as far into the shadows as he could manage, and manifested a tiny tendril at the end of his index finger, which he dipped into the bottle of alkalized water. The tendril started stinging, slowly at first, then growing more painful. Nothing like being burned alive, but enough to catch Alex’s attention and frustrate him to no end.  
  
There were too many possible causes, that was the problem. Alex’s first hypothesis was that the common factor was water. His second hypothesis was that both bottled waters had been alkaline, and that his body could tolerate acids but not bases. The problem with the first hypothesis was that all of the liquids he’d tested were mostly water. The problem with the second hypothesis was that normal bottled and tap water were usually slightly acidic, not alkaline, and they still tasted different even though they both stung.  
  
So if both of those explanations were wrong, what else was there? Additives like chlorine and fluoride? Wouldn’t those also be present in the coke? Maybe not, but then what about the cranberry juice? Wouldn’t that also have natural dissolved minerals, salts, and chemicals?  
  
Then, another possibility occurred to Alex—osmotic pressure. If his body had a low tolerance for hypotonia, then drinking plain water would damage him just like an ordinary person drinking distilled water would. The stinging effect would be caused by his cells undergoing lysis, and that would last only until the water was diluted or it reached equilibrium. The effect would diminish as the level of dissolved solids increased in the solution, until it became unnoticeable. The hypothesis seemed to fit.  
  
What would that imply about his tendrils, though? Ordinary somatic cell membranes could be vulnerable to osmotic pressure, but that was part of the reason why the body’s tissues were caked in largely watertight epithelial cells, inside and out—they kept everything separate. Did his tendrils not have epithelial cells? He couldn’t assume anything about their composition, really. Were his tendrils even _made_ of cells?  
  
Alex wasn’t exactly equipped to answer that question. He’d have killed someone for a microscope and some slides in that moment.  
  
That passing mental image caused his train of thought to derail. What the hell was he even _doing?_ How did he know all of this chemistry shit? Lung had been a high school drop-out. Lung only had the vaguest idea what an acid was, barely understood the concept of pH, and he certainly didn’t know scientific terms like ‘epithelial’ or ‘hypotonia,’ not even in his native Japanese or Mandarin.  
  
In other words, this whole line of inquiry must have been coming from _Alex,_ not Lung. It was oddly gratifying. Alex had no episodic memories, but his semantic memory kind of kicked ass when it came to experimentation.  
  
He’d still hit a dead end, though, and now he was feeling even more waterlogged than he did before.  
  
Alex went into the store for the third time in ten minutes, much to the cashier’s apparent exasperation.  
  
“Bathroom key?” Alex asked.  
  
The old man gave Alex a suspicious look, as if judging the likelihood of whether Alex was going to go in there to get high, before giving a resigned sigh and placing a key attached to a wooden plank into the transaction tray.  
  
Alex took the key and hurried over to the bathroom, unlocking the door and locking it again behind him.  
  
The bathroom was single-occupancy, and actually not as filthy as Alex had expected. It was still pretty filthy, and had graffiti tagged all over the far wall, but it was better than the corner that Lung had shit in during his stay at the bottom of Tōng Líng Tǎ’s stone shaft.  
  
Alex passed in front of the mirror above the sink, and stopped in his tracks. This was the first time he’d ever seen himself, beyond the picture on his driver’s license.  
  
He looked absolutely terrible. Granted, he didn't seem _too_ out of the ordinary, relative to his horrific internal state, but compared to the baseline of his pictures, he looked more than half-dead. His skin and lips had a bloodless pallor, contrasted by the dark bags under his eyes, which only served to highlight his pale blue eyes.  
  
Feeling a bit shaken, Alex adjusted his hood to cover more of his face, then went over to use the toilet. He unzipped his fly to relieve himself, only to be hit with _yet another_ unpleasant surprise. He had lost count of which number this one was supposed to be.  
  
For some unfathomable reason, Alex’s urine was blackish-red, and it smelled strongly of ammonia, burnt hair, rust, and what could only be described as death. The mix of industrial chemical smells and all-too-organic rot made him want to gag, but he lacked the requisite organs to do more than dry-heave.  
  
Alex somehow kept his stream straight as he was getting his gag reflex under control, and tried to gather his thoughts. He might as well choose to believe that this dire symptom was just another sign of his body’s general weirdness, and not actually a sign he was about to die from catastrophic renal failure. It wasn’t like he could go to the hospital anyway. Not only would his secret be out as soon as they noticed he had no pulse, but he could also feel his own kidneys with no need for an X-ray, and he highly doubted that the tattered, tendril-strewn vestiges that had once been his kidneys would respond to conventional medicine.  
  
For that matter, why the hell was this taking so long? Christ, he was pissing like a racehorse, and he was showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Alex turned his focus inward, using his proprioception to try to figure out what was happening with his freaky anatomy this time.  
  
Alex quickly realized why he didn’t notice what was happening sooner. He could feel all the parts of himself that were flesh or tendril, with far more of the latter than the former inside him, but he couldn’t directly feel the fluids his tendrils were surrounded by. That interstitial fluid was what was draining out of him, leaving behind hollow spaces. It had nothing to do with his bladder, which as far as he could tell barely even existed beyond a few useless shreds.  
  
So, apparently all that fluid was waste, and Alex’s body wanted to get rid of it. He gave up on trying to fight it at this point. He was in no position to try arguing with what his body wanted to do, since he didn’t have any better ideas, and anything he tried might backfire spectacularly—such as drinking water when he wasn’t actually thirsty.  
  
What felt like an eon later, Alex finally purged all the fluids out of his body, which did weird things to his sense of balance for a moment before he shifted his body weight around to compensate. He flushed and washed his hands, more out of habit than any concern for hygiene, then left the bathroom key on the sink, not bothering to return it. He stomped out of the gas station in a foul mood that was only made worse by his hunger.  
  
Alex was sick and tired of being blindsided by his bizarre biology. It made him feel stupid, like a student that had shown up for a hard test without studying. It wasn’t a rational emotion, since he had no reasonable way of guessing how his body would react to things, and his power sure as hell didn’t come with an owner’s manual, but still, his ignorance rankled him.  
  
He really needed to address the elephant in the room.  
  
What the hell was he supposed to _eat?_  
  
The fact that normal food had done nothing for him, that humans smelled enticing, and that the only thing that satisfied his hunger so far was Lung all pointed to one blindingly obvious hypothesis: Alex needed to cannibalize people in order to heal himself.  
  
Alex’s rational mind refused to accept that explanation. It was just too _arbitrary,_ it made no goddamn _sense!_ Why humans? What possible vitamin or nutrient could they have that fried chicken and a banana lacked? It wasn’t like he was allergic to other foods; he just got energy from them instead of growth. Then again, judging from Lung’s memories, parahuman powers were under absolutely zero obligation to make any sense.  
  
The fact that Lung was human was just one of the variables at work, though. Lung had been alive but the chicken had been cooked, so maybe that had something to do with it? Alex’s dietary restriction could be something as simple and broad as the fact that he needed to eat raw meat, and it didn’t matter whether it came from a human or not. It may even need to be _living,_ but assuming Alex was an obligate carnivore, the reason the raw banana wouldn’t count as being “alive” was because it was a plant.  
  
That, at least, was something Alex could test, if he could get his hands on a non-human animal.  
  
Alex set off in search of a live animal, preferably something mammalian rather than an arthropod. That goal wasn’t just because the latter was disgusting, but also because the mammals’ genetic similarity to humans might be a relevant factor, and he wanted to eliminate as many variables as possible.  
  
Fortunately, it didn’t take long to find something. Alex had expected to eventually come across a stray dog or cat, but as it turned out, the thriving rat population of Brockton Bay had long since grown too bold around humans. He was able to cut off and corner a rat in the gutter before it could escape down a storm drain, and he snatched it up.  
  
The rat struggled in Alex’s grip, squirming around and attempting to bite his finger, but failing to break the skin.  
  
The wriggling little thing was hardly appetizing, and it definitely lacked that alluring smell that humans possessed. Alex was hungry, though, so he didn’t really care if the rat tasted awful, so long as it was edible.  
  
Alex ducked out of view of the street and reluctantly forced his feeder tendrils to come out and take apart the rat.  
  
There was a brief surprise when Alex felt the rat’s weak memories flicker briefly in his mind. It was muddled, but one interesting takeaway was that rat emotions and human emotions were almost indistinguishable, even if she didn’t think in complicated concepts or have much of a sense of self. The rat also relied far more on her sense of smell, which blew a human’s completely out of the water in ways human language lacked the vocabulary to describe.  
  
Alex felt his arm where he’d assimilated the rat, and to his furious disappointment, the rat had proven no different than the food had been.  
  
_“Fuck!”_ Alex swore, twisting around and viciously kicking the side of a dumpster. His foot punched a hole straight through the rusty metal with a deafening _boom_.  
  
Alex extricated his foot, cursing continuously as he did. Then he ran away, hoping the loud noise didn’t draw anyone’s attention to him.  
  
What was he supposed to do now? He’d just eaten a huge dragon-man that must have weighed four hundred pounds if he was an ounce, and he was _still hungry_. After all that, he’d only managed to get roughly halfway recovered, which meant his efficiency of converting human meat into tendrils was abysmal. He couldn’t sustain himself by just taking a finger here and a pint of blood there, no—he needed to consume entire human bodies just to make a meaningful _dent_.  
  
Was Alex doomed to not just be a cannibal, but an _obligate_ cannibal with a lightning-fast metabolism as well? That would be a real problem, to make the understatement of the fucking century. He searched his stolen memories for any solutions.  
  
Lung had gotten away with a lot of killing, Oni Lee even more so, but only because the ABB mostly targeted other criminals and was too much of a hassle for the local Protectorate to remove. It would have upset the delicate balance of the city and weakened the heroes enough that they wouldn’t be able to keep a lid on the chaos that followed.  
  
The problem was one of reputation. It was one thing for the powers-that-be to overlook Lung oppressing, enslaving, and extorting the powerless peons of the city, especially since they knew they weren’t strong enough to really do anything about it, but if anyone ever found out Alex was a cannibal, it would be another matter entirely. The public outcry would be too great for the Protectorate to ignore. Alex didn’t have any proven reputation built up to protect himself like Lung did. The Protectorate wouldn’t hesitate to bring their full force to bear against Alex, and the villains would behave likewise if they ever found out he’d eaten one of the pillars of their little community. None of the gangs would tolerate that kind of threat in their midst, not even if he wanted to join one of them. He’d either have to take over a gang himself or avoid them entirely, there was no middle ground.  
  
The idea of becoming a gang lord appealed to some part of Alex, but he was unsure whether that part came from himself and not Lung. Thinking about it practically, though, the last thing Alex needed was the notoriety and attention of taking over a gang. He needed to hide his true nature, at all costs. That meant covering his tracks for any investigations as well.  
  
The best thing he could do would be to feed on bodies that nobody would miss or care about. He could always try getting a job at a crematorium or morgue and use his sleight-of-hand trick to sneak bits of human flesh here and there, but that would take entirely too long and he had no references, no documentation, nor enough money to get those things. He could skip that step by consuming and impersonating a coroner, but that would leave him stuck, and being around the same people all the time would risk exposure in countless different ways. He could try feeding on the plentiful homeless population of the city, but that wasn’t a viable long-term strategy either. Eventually, some bleeding heart on the police force or in social services would notice them disappearing and start snooping around. It would be best to feed on them sparingly, if he could manage it.  
  
Alex considered Lung’s strategy of targeting criminals. It had worked for a while, at least until Alex had come along. Nobody thought it was unusual for low-level criminals and gang members to suddenly disappear. They did so all the time, and no one gave a single shit. The ABB would be a good target; Lung didn’t know much about the world at large, but he knew his little fiefdom inside and out.  
  
Before Alex could set any of these ideas in motion, though, he needed more information. Lung hadn’t known anything about Alex, but that wasn’t saying much. Alex needed to research himself, find out if he was wanted by the police, continue experimenting with his powers, and eventually plan a way to get someone to eat before he succumbed to his hunger again and did something incriminating. By his own rough estimation, he had a few days before it got that bad—Assuming he didn’t get burned alive again, at least.  
  
It was going to be a long night.  
  



	5. Incubation 1.5

**Incubation 1.5**

I ran through the night, no longer caring what kind of attention I drew to myself in costume.

I was terrified of Lung, more afraid than I'd ever been of anything in my life, yet despite that, some part of me wanted to turn back immediately to go help the Case 53. I knew there was nothing I could do, but I wanted to go back anyway. I pushed past that impulse, and pressed on, repeating a mantra of reassurances in my head.

_Still alive. He'd still been alive. Fighting, dying, but he was still alive._

I just had to believe he'd make it out okay. I just had to believe I hadn't condemned him. I'd done everything I could, so why did I still feel like I was making a terrible mistake?

That girl, Tattletale, had said he was nearly at the limit of his regeneration, but surely he could eventually make a full recovery if he made it out alive?

After a few hundred more feet, I slowed my pace to a more efficient jog. I was gasping from the exertion, but it wasn't just that. The guilt I felt seemed to magnify with every step I took and each second that passed. It was starting to suffocate me, squeezing my chest in a vice.

Another block passed, and I finally put two and two together about the weird team that helped fight off Lung.

Those four capes must have been a villain team, probably rivals of the ABB. They must have thought I was one, too, because they treated me like an ally even though they mistook me for another villain. And why _wouldn't_ they assume that? After all, I had inadvertently helped them escape from Lung. I might end up being the reason someone _died_ in that fight.

In fact, the new cape could be dying right this instant, and it was all because of me. If I had just _talked_ to the Case 53 to start with, we probably wouldn't have stumbled into this disaster.

I remembered the situation where I'd gotten my powers. I'd been trapped in decaying filth, beating on the door of my locker, screaming, sobbing, begging to be let out. The worst part of all was the crushing knowledge that no one, not one single person would do anything to help me, either too self-absorbed or too afraid of my bullies' retaliation. Was I just like _them?_ Too afraid to do the right thing?

My steps faltered as the adrenaline rush left me, and I started to shake uncontrollably. Stopping completely, I took in slow, deep lungfuls of the biting night air to try to control the sudden wave of nausea that washed over me. I just barely kept myself from throwing up, and even that was mostly my fear of having to remove my mask out in the open to do so.

I hugged my trembling arms around my midsection, trying to regain control of myself. There was still something I was missing, and that was all that mattered. At last, it hit me.

I'd done everything I could to avoid the blame for what happened, but that wasn't at all the same as doing the _right_ thing.

I knew the reason why I ran away, and it wasn't out of pragmatism. I was afraid. I knew I was too weak to stop Lung from killing the Case 53, and I knew I was too weak to stop Lung from killing me right after.

But staying or running away weren't the only options. That was my crucial mistake.

Maybe, if I'd tried taking control of the other cape like my powers seemed capable of, I might have prevented this. It might not have worked, but I had been too afraid to try at first, and after that, I'd been blocking him out of my power's perception and hadn't even thought of it.

It was too late now. I'd been gone from the fight for several minutes, and it had already been almost over for the Case 53.

I couldn't just give up, though. There was something else I was missing, I knew it.

I forced myself to breathe regularly, focusing on that and nothing else for a few seconds until my head stopped spinning. I had to do something before it was too late, but what?

 _The heroes._ I could call the heroes. At least the police had probably been called by now, but I had to make _sure_. Even if the Protectorate already knew and they were too late to stop it, I should tell them about my role. They were going to find out I was involved anyway. Even if they didn't know or trust me, I had to get my side of events out as soon as possible, establish right from the start what had happened, that I wasn't one of the bad guys.

I resisted the idea, my mind searching in vain for something else I could do instead.

 _No_. That was only my shame and fear talking. This was the right thing to do.

I thought of what I would say as I looked for a working pay phone, using my swarm to search alongside my own eyes. I quickly found one the next street over under the sickly yellow glow of a hardware store's signage, next to a cage full of rust-spotted tanks of propane. Mustering up the fortitude to punch in 9-1-1 was far more difficult than it had any right to be. Against all logic, I still felt like a little kid who'd get in trouble for typing in that number.

I raised the battered receiver up to my ear with the same weight and dread as I would hold a loaded revolver. Each ring was like playing Russian roulette. There was a long pause, then it rang once. Twice.

I had just started to wonder if the lines were being swamped by other calls when the call finally connected. The police dispatcher answered so quickly I almost missed what he said. "Brockton Bay 911, what is your emergency?"

"I was in a cape fight with Lung," I blurted out, completely forgetting the half-baked script I'd thought up.

"Are you in a safe place? Are you injured?" the dispatcher asked immediately.

"I'm—yes, I mean I'm safe, but another parahuman is badly injured. He was still fighting Lung when I left, you have to hurry," I said breathlessly.

"Would this be the disturbance and fire reported on Getter and Piedmont?" the dispatcher asked.

"I, uh, yes. I think that's it."

"The police, fire department, and Protectorate heroes have already been dispatched and are on their way. Do you need an ambulance?" the dispatcher asked.

"No—but I'm a cape, I can still go back and help," I said, growing frustrated. "Can I talk to the PRT or the heroes?"

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. Then he asked, "Can I get your cape name?"

"I'm new, you wouldn't know me," I said, feeling like kicking myself for not deciding on a name beforehand. "Just... put me through? Please? The way the fight was going, someone might be seriously hurt or dead by now."

There was a slightly longer pause on the other end of the line.

"I'm transferring your call to the PRT," the dispatcher said, then the line went staticky for a second and a ringtone sounded.

The PRT picked up on the first ring, and this time a woman answered. "Parahuman Response Team, what is your emergency?"

"I'm a new cape, I was just fighting Lung with another cape, and he needs help _right now,"_ I said, sounding surprisingly authoritative, even to myself.

To her credit, the woman on the other end of the line didn't even hesitate. "Is he or anyone else in need of specialized assistance?"

I wracked my brain for details. "Um. He's a regenerator, and a Brute, if that helps. He's badly burned. There were also, uh, five gang members, at least. They've got spider bites and bee stings, so they might need antivenins. And there might be more people trapped in the burning building."

"Noted. Armsmaster is on the scene with firefighters and police now, and they're securing the area. No other parahumans have been reported there yet. Our system shows you're calling from a public phone nearby. Do you need someone to come get you?" the PRT operator asked.

"No," I said quickly, my heart sinking at the news. "No, I'm heading back there now."

"I will notify the police and Armsmaster that you are coming. Can you provide a description of your costume or appearance?" she asked.

"I'm wearing a black spider silk costume with armor panels and yellow lenses," I said automatically, and belatedly wondered if I shouldn't have mentioned the spider silk.

The operator, for her part, sounded completely unfazed. "They will be informed within thirty seconds."

I guessed that specific time limit was a warning in case I tried to teleport there right away or something. As it was, it would take me a few minutes to get there. I thanked the operator quickly and hung up the phone, then began a slow jog back.

It was a little weird that the PRT insisted I see Armsmaster right away, but for all I knew it could have just been the normal procedure to deal with new capes.

The knowledge that I was going to meet a big-name superhero like Armsmaster would have made me ecstatic under other circumstances, but now I was going to meet him having utterly failed as a superhero on my first night out.

Realistically, I only hoped he wouldn't arrest me—I couldn't even imagine how devastated Dad would be if I went to jail, despite how distant we'd grown lately.

I continued jogging back down the street, and it wasn't long before I saw the flashing lights and heard the sirens. A huge red fire engine was the first thing I saw, pumping water into the rapidly diminishing fires of the apartment building.

I felt my dread mounting as I got closer, and my power's range encompassed more and more of the street without encountering the Case 53. I knew long before I arrived that he was either gone, or he'd died. It was a tiny relief that the only flames I could detect with my swarm were the rapidly drowning, natural fires in the apartment building. My bugs' senses were difficult to parse, but even they couldn't miss a giant burning monster like Lung. He was nowhere to be found.

By the time I got close enough to see Armsmaster's futuristic motorcycle amidst the cop cars, I could feel with my swarm that the five incapacitated ABB gang members had all been shackled by their hands and feet, and were still covered in many of the bugs I'd left behind. They were festooned over the street like landed fish, all of them lying belly-down on the ground while police officers frisked them for weapons and evidence. It was a surreal scene, made all the stranger by the flashing red and blue lights of the cop cars and fire engine, and the green and white lights of a PRT van up the street. The cops caught sight of me first, and they were tense, but they made no move to stop me. Apparently, calling ahead was the right move.

I drifted around cop cars, firefighters, police officers, and incapacitated gang members like a ghost. None of this felt real.

Armsmaster was in front of the apartment building, kneeling down with his famous halberd in hand and inspecting the cracked, melted patches of asphalt where Lung had fought the Case 53 and the giant mutant dogs. The various little lights in his blue and silver power armor gave him a subtle bluish glow, making him seem even bigger than he already was, even while kneeling down.

I exhaled a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding when I saw no charred bodies lying out in the street. True, one or both might still be inside the building, or Lung might have scorched the other cape away into nothing, but I honestly doubted he had all that much fire left in him. He'd been shrinking and growing less coordinated when I'd seen him last.

Armsmaster saw me and turned my way. He motioned me to stop approaching about fifteen feet away, and I halted in my tracks. He stood, and towered over me.

"You're a new face. So I hear you had something to do with all of this?" Armsmaster said, his commanding voice carrying easily over the rushing roar of the fire hoses.

I hesitated. It was now or never to own up to it. I took a deep breath, and my words came out much calmer than I'd been expecting.

"Yeah. I saw a man getting stopped and held at gunpoint by those two," I said, pointing at the first two thugs lying up the street. "I used my bugs to help him escape, and he told me he didn't know who he was or how he got to this city."

Armsmaster's mouth, the only visible part of his face, hardened into a thin line. "Did you notice anything strange about his appearance?"

I hesitated, then nodded. I didn't want to say I had been following him and felt like my power could Master him, that would only make me sound like the next Bad Canary or Heartbreaker. Instead, I gave only a half-truth. "Yeah. He was a parahuman. I saw when Lung arrived, his body could turn into... it was like a bunch of snakes or tentacles, moving almost too fast to see. Tendrils."

Armsmaster nodded slowly. "He claimed to have no memories? This could be a possible Case 53. Have you heard of the phenomenon?"

"Like Newter and Gregor the Snail, right? That was my thought, too. I barely got the chance to talk to him before Lung arrived, though. Is he... did anyone see what happened? Is the Case 53 okay?" I asked.

Armsmaster shook his head. "We're still looking for witnesses, but neither of them were here when I arrived on the scene."

I peered into the hollowed-out front of the apartment building, trying to see past the billowing steam, smoke, and water spray. "They were fighting inside the building when I left. I couldn't do anything more to help, it was all on fire, so I called for help," I said lamely.

Armsmaster took a few steps closer to me, then turned to face into the ruined building. "My initial scans don't show any signs of bodies or living people inside."

"That's—that's good," I said, slumping in relief.

Armsmaster turned to me again. "There's evidence that other capes were fighting here. Did you see anything?" he asked.

"Y-yeah," I said, startled out of my thoughts. "About halfway through the fight, these four teenage capes arrived, ones I didn't know about before this. They said their names were Grue, Tattletale, Regent, and Bit—uh, Hellhound. These giant monster dogs attacked Lung for a while, then Grue asked if I was okay and Tattletale said the Case 53 was at the limit of his regeneration and about to lose control. She got Hellhound to call off the dogs, and they ran away while Lung and the Case 53 were still fighting. I left just after they did."

Armsmaster shifted his posture, leaning on his famous halberd. "I see. Those four teens are the Undersiders, a villain gang we've been having trouble tracking. And you...?"

It took me a moment to realize what he was asking. "I'm one of the good guys," I said warily. "But I think that the villains thought I was an ally, because I attacked Lung, and maybe because my costume looks kinda dark and villainous? I didn't really intend that when I was making it, it just came out that way. I'd been experimenting with different dyes and colors, but only black seemed..."

I snapped my mouth shut, realizing I'd been rambling.

For his part, Armsmaster didn't seem particularly bothered. He remained stoic in demeanor. "Why don't you start at the beginning," he said.

"Wait, you believe me?" I said, feeling like I missed a step.

"I do now," Armsmaster said, sounding both certain and a little annoyed. I felt a tiny twinge of resentment at that—after all, _he'd_ been the one who'd seemed unsure just a moment ago.

I let it go, and briefly described my powers to Armsmaster. I told him how my first night out in costume had begun, and I decided not to tell him about my power's interactions with the inhuman cape—no need to go earning distrust when he already seemed skeptical that I was a hero. At least he was content with quietly listening to my explanation, though when I reached the part about sending my most venomous bugs after Lung, he nodded and hummed thoughtfully.

"If you can control the kinds of venom and how much are used, that would explain why none of these gang members are dead from anaphylactic shock despite how often you stung them," he said, sounding oddly blasé about my attempt to temporarily debilitate five people with deadly bugs.

"I brought EpiPens just in case," I said defensively.

Armsmaster waved a hand, as though dismissing the topic. "Prudent, but I'd rather hear about the Undersiders and this other parahuman that got involved. We know far too little about the local villains, so any witness testimony is _invaluable_. Any detail you can remember might help immensely."

I felt hope stirring in my chest at Armsmaster's words of encouragement, a bit of tension easing from me.

I described everything I could remember about the Undersiders, from what they said to the color of their costumes. In turn, Armsmaster filled in some of the gaps, noting what the Protectorate knew or didn't know about the team of villains. Grue and Hellhound were something of a known quantity, but Tattletale and Regent were a total mystery, it seemed.

The ABB, strangely enough, actually had fewer capes than the Undersiders, though Armsmaster's descriptions of the teleporting assassin Oni Lee and the new bomb-specialist Bakuda were so deeply terrifying that I wasted no time in agreeing to downplay my own involvement in the five gangsters' arrests, even though ceding the credit stung a little. Armsmaster praised me for that choice, which made me think I'd at least bought a little credit with him, but he was particularly frustrated by the lack of any concrete details about the Case 53.

"The last thing we need is another parahuman of unknown allegiance picking fights among the other villain groups," he said, starting to pace back and forth.

I shook my head. "I don't think he was looking for a fight. He was just walking down the other street, alone, when those two jumped him. They thought he was with the Empire Eighty-Eight, because he was wearing a black and red leather jacket, and he was white."

"Describe his powers and appearance for me," Armsmaster said, suddenly sounding keenly interested.

"He punched Lung into the building," I said, pointing to the crater, still somewhat dazed by the spectacular fight. "He was pretty fast, too. But Lung just got faster and stronger than him as they fought. He could... sort of heal, it was like regeneration. His power restored his body, even his clothes."

Armsmaster did _not_ seem happy about that last part.

"Possible temporal reversion? God, I hope not," he muttered.

I cleared my dry throat and continued. "He's... well, he's maybe in his twenties or thirties, I think? No facial scars or tattoos or anything to really make him stand out, aside from his eyes. They were a really pale blue. He was average height, average weight. Clean shaven, and he was wearing a hood so I couldn't see much of his head or hair, but I guess from his eyebrows his hair was dark or black. Probably short."

Armsmaster inclined his head to me. "Thank you for your candor about this. It sounds like you've been through quite the ordeal, especially for your first night out."

I cast a glance at the ruined street. "I was so sure that someone was going to die because of me," I admitted in a small voice.

Armsmaster closed the remaining distance between us and put a steadying hand on my shoulder. "You should take this as a very valuable lesson," he said sternly. "It looks like no one got killed this time, but the next time might be different. The next time it might even be you."

I shrank back from his touch, the sick anxiety rising in my stomach again. "I know," I said hollowly.

Armsmaster's grip remained firm, but his tone softened somewhat. "You did a damn good job of taking out all those gang members and holding off Lung, I'd say. I can't fault you for deciding to attack those gang members for threatening the other parahuman, even if it was reckless with Lung so close by. Do you see what I'm getting at? Every mistake you made happened before you started fighting. That's how it usually goes."

I looked back at Armsmaster, up into the opaque visor covering his eyes. "What could I have done?" I asked.

Armsmaster smiled. It was a nice smile, one that showed no teeth. "You seem like a smart girl. I think you know the answer to that question."

I realized that I actually _did_ know what he was getting at, or at least I knew the answer he wanted to hear. "I had no backup," I said slowly. "I didn't have any way of contacting help. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know that Lung was nearby until it was already too late. I wasn't ready. I wasn't _prepared_."

"Exactly." Armsmaster said gravely. He stood back and pounded the haft of his halberd on the ground to emphasize the word, and in that moment he looked and sounded every bit like his role as the leader of heroes. "That's why the Protectorate exists. That's why we have the Wards program. Brockton Bay is dangerous, and in this city, you need all the advantages you can get. Wading in alone is a recipe for disaster. You can't rely on just yourself for protection. If you were to join the Wards, we'd provide you with training, legal and financial aid, the finest medical care anywhere, mentorships from the greatest heroes in the world, and most importantly, you'd become part of a _team_."

Maybe it was just my exhaustion, but Armsmaster's inspiring sales pitch made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. I did neither, of course, but the urge was there all the same.

What Armsmaster was saying made sense. An overwhelming amount of sense. If he'd made that kind of offer to just about anyone else, they'd have been deeply moved and inspired to join with him. It was logical. It was tempting.

But not to me.

Armsmaster had no way of knowing, but I wanted to become a hero to get _away_ from my high school life. I wanted to believe that the Wards would be better than the bullying I faced at Winslow, but I just couldn't bring myself to take that risk. I didn't think my soul could bear the disappointment if I ended up just trading one prison for another, and I simply didn't have it in me to trust anything. Not yet, anyway.

"Thanks for the advice," I said, somehow managing to sound more sincere than fatigued. "But I need some time to think it over. It's been... a long day."

I was a bit surprised to see that Armsmaster wasn't visibly disappointed, nor did he judge me for essentially blowing him off. He simply held out a hand for me to shake. I took it, feeling my arm tingle from the contact.

"You can call me at the PHQ if you ever need any help," he said, and I took the words as a dismissal. Then it occurred to me that maybe I'd earned a little bit of favor by letting him take credit for the gangsters' arrests.

I thanked Armsmaster again, and made my way home. My head was practically spinning with the highs and lows of the night. I'd been so sure I'd done something unforgivable, something I couldn't take back, yet somehow, I'd managed to salvage the situation. And now, Lung had been thwarted and there were five ABB gang members that wouldn't be terrorizing the streets. All because of _me_.

When I finally made it back home and crept into my bed, the last thought I had before I fell asleep was that maybe this hero career wasn't doomed to failure after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter in which we begin our final station of canon for this story. Also, I'd like to offer a special thanks to those readers who have left reviews!


	6. Incubation 1.6

**Incubation 1.6**

I wove through the other pedestrians and various stalls in the midmorning bustle of downtown, my bone-deep fatigue warring with the fires of my resentment.

The morning after my first night out as a cape turned out to be even more horrendous than I'd come to expect. I'd gotten maybe two good hours of sleep last night and woke up with a sore, bruised right shoulder, noodly post-marathon legs, and an aching tongue. I pretended to get up as if everything were normal, only for Dad to reveal he'd known about me sneaking out last night anyway. He'd even noticed I'd burned a few strands of my hair before I did, which I hastily blamed on the stove.

I really needed to work on my stealth if I was going to keep my cape life a secret. Four months of jotting down coded notes in journals, assembling my costume, and practicing my control were one thing, but actually going out and fighting was a whole new ballgame.

The whole morning had been a mix of mundane and surreal. Just a few hours ago, I'd been fighting for my life and had rescued someone, only to get them possibly killed afterwards by Lung. My secret cape life had encroached on my normal life in other ways, too—during Mrs. Knott's computer lab, I'd trawled through the Parahumans Online message boards for news about last night's battle, but I'd found nothing about me or the Case 53.

Aside from a few people who'd seen the Undersiders riding Bitch's monster dogs around town that night, the only witnesses were the ABB thugs, and none of them had been in a position to see or do much of anything. The Protectorate apparently wasn't letting any of them spill the beans about my power, which was something of a relief. I wouldn't want this botched introduction to be my lasting legacy.

After that dead end, I finally hit pay dirt when I trawled through the connections thread looking for clues. Someone calling themselves 'Tt'—obviously trying to sound like Tattletale—had left me a cryptic invitation for 'Bug' to contact her in the connections thread. Tattletale wasn't exactly being _threatening,_ but she was still a villain reaching out to me under friendly pretenses that might turn very unfriendly as soon as she found out I was a hero. I also had no guarantee this was really Tattletale, and not, say, Bakuda or someone equally horrible pretending to be her.

I'd already intended to go to the public library and message 'Tt' back on a more anonymous computer, but my schedule had been moved up. The last straw had been my best-friend-turned-betrayer Emma, of course. When she boxed me in with all those other girls and brought up the week I cried myself to sleep after Mom died, I cracked. The mask of indifference I'd successfully maintained for weeks fell away, and my tears had shown her that the blow had landed. Now she would become even more vicious and targeted after getting a reaction from me. I felt furious—at Emma for stooping so low, at myself for losing control, at Mr. Gladly and the school for their incompetence, at Sophia for playing her childish game of keep-away with my backpack, at the various hangers-on for their dumb contradictory insults, and just at life in general. The vitriol inside me was going to boil over if I stayed another minute in that hellish fucking place, so I left, abandoning my backpack and the remaining sliver of my dignity.

I knew that simmering over my frustration and resentment wasn't making me feel any better, so I distracted myself by thinking about cape business, from Armsmaster's advice to Tattletale's contact. As I neared my destination, though, all thoughts were instantly driven out of my mind as a spike of pure, familiar pain crashed into my awareness.

I reeled for a moment, blinded and deafened, before shutting the sensation out of my power. The splitting headache vanished almost as quickly as it had arrived, and I found myself doubled over, clutching my head, without even noticing I had moved. Luckily, I managed to avoid hitting the pavement and biting my tongue again like yesterday.

I drew a shaky breath, and realized what had happened. Just like last night, the Case 53 had entered my range. I breathed out a sigh of relief.

_So he really hadn't died after all._

I couldn't see the library yet, but I knew it was just up the street, and I knew the Case 53 was there. My momentary relief quickly turned into nervousness. I had no costume. What if he recognized me? Had he somehow known I was headed to the library? Was he angry I abandoned him to fight Lung alone? No, none of that made any sense—I was getting worked up over nothing.

Well, maybe not _nothing_. I still had a secret identity to protect, and I had no idea if the Case 53 blamed me for Lung showing up in the first place. He wasn't exactly grateful to me for saving him from the gunman last night, but then again, he'd had more important things to worry about, and he hadn't been overtly hostile to me, either.

By tiny degrees, I sharpened my sense of the Case 53, letting my power give me more information about him.

The first thing that was immediately apparent was that there was more of him, which wasn't doing my headache any favors. He wasn't any bigger outwardly, but he'd grown a lot denser. The tendrils and membranes forming the structure of his internal mass had become noticeably thicker. If I had to guess, it seemed like there was about two or three times as much living matter inside him as there was before, but hollow spaces still comprised roughly half of his insides. If it was even possible, this only made his rotted insides even _more_ viscerally disturbing, since some of the organs that were only vague, nebulous shapes before were now recognizable.

Mom had once told me a story about Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia. Catherine had gone to visit the war-ravaged lands of her lover, Governor Potemkin, and in preparation of her arrival, he had fake villages erected, and filled them with actors playing out the role of peasants, and buildings that gave all outward appearances of life, but which held nothing inside. These became known as Potemkin villages.

The Case 53 reminded me a lot of that story. He was a Potemkin person—normal on the outside, messed up on the inside. It was a lot easier to think about him in those terms rather than focus on the horrific sensations of his putrefied organs. I withdrew my senses from him again, until only the awareness of his relative position remained.

I was rooted in place by indecision for a moment. Was going to the library worth the risk of being discovered out of costume? If I was being honest with myself, I really wanted to check in on the Case 53 and see what he was doing. He had powers, but that didn't mean he'd be okay after waking up in Brockton Bay with no memories. Maybe I could offer help somehow, or if he was up to no good, I might be able to put a stop to it.

I took one step forward, then another and another. I'd never forgive myself if I missed this opportunity to check in on the Case 53. There was something inherently fascinating about amnesia, a hundred times more so when it came bundled with superpowers. How could you predict the way someone would act in that situation? If someone was good or bad in the life they didn't remember, did it carry over? The options were almost limitless, and if it was at all possible to help steer things in a good direction, I wanted to do it.

The Central Library was much nicer than its proximity to Winslow would imply. It sort of looked like a museum or art gallery, with tall ceilings, walls of windows, and pillars interspersed with massive tapestries and pieces of artwork. The architecture and general style looked vaguely Greek, but the roof was at a diagonal angle and it had much less ornamentation, probably to make it seem more sleek and 'modern.'

As the building loomed larger in front of me, I cautiously slowed down. I could feel the Case 53 somewhere on the second floor, far ahead and to my left. It should be safe enough to go through the front entrance, he probably couldn't even see the front windows from where he was.

I entered the library and made a beeline for the stairs. The bank of computers were on the second floor, but I'd worry about messaging Tattletale later. I walked right by them, and deeper into the library's reference section, where I could feel the Case 53 was.

As I went down the rows and rows of books and trade journals, I expanded my awareness just enough to get a vague idea of how the Case 53 was positioned. He was standing up, holding his arms in such a way he must have been holding an open book, and his head was bent downward. Clearly, he was reading.

As silently as I could, I crossed two more rows of books and went far down the aisle, positioning myself so that the Case 53's back was facing me. Taking a deep breath as though I were about to take a plunge, I peeked around a shelf, ready to pull my head back the instant my power informed me that he was turning around.

As it turned out, I didn't need to bother with the stealth routine. The Case 53 was completely engrossed in the thick brown tome he had opened in his hands, rapidly flipping through pages and periodically checking an index he kept a finger on as a bookmark. Just like yesterday, he was dressed in clashing styles like he'd just blindly grabbed the first things he could reach in his closet. He wore a white dress shirt underneath a nondescript gray hoodie, and over that he wore a black leather jacket with white armbands and a red pattern on the back like wings. Maybe Lung hadn't been completely wrong when he accused him of being Empire, since the jacket gave me a strong neo-nazi vibe. Then again, maybe it was no more meaningful than his other chaotic fashion choices.

There was no way I could tell what he was reading from this distance, but the mere fact that he was reading at all was oddly reassuring. Reading from incredibly dry periodicals wasn't the kind of thing I imagined that a junkie or a neo-nazi did with their free time.

Even with my glasses, I had some difficulty making out which shelf he'd taken the book from. I had no idea what 504 would mean in the Dewey Decimal System, but there was a catalogue computer at the end of the aisle that would let me know. I left the Case 53 to his reading and quickly brought up the reference section on the computer.

Apparently, 504 was the Parahuman Sciences reference section. I shouldn't have been surprised at the subject, but it still seemed more than a little strange that someone with no memories would think to check out scientific research journals first, instead of going to the police or hospitals for help. I knew he probably hadn't done that after the fight, since PHO had no mention of him, but then again Armsmaster had kept my name off the site, too. I couldn't imagine they'd just let him go to the library on his own so soon after he checked in with them, though. Even if his powers would probably keep him safe, there was no guarantee other people would be safe from _him_. The heroes would probably want to make sure he was responsible first, and run tests to see if he had control over his powers.

The Case 53 didn't seem to be doing any harm on his own, though, so I made my way back to the bank of computers to carry out my own business. It only took a few minutes of waiting and constantly checking on the Case 53 before one of the terminals opened up, a woman unslinging her purse from the chair's back as she left.

I darted into the vacated spot before someone else could steal it, and logged in to Parahumans Online.

A quick check of the Brockton Bay thread revealed no updates on me or the Case 53. It made sense, he'd probably been at the library for a while, if his place in that huge book was any indication.

From there, I navigated to the connections section and found the message 'Tt' had sent. I signed in as an anonymous guest, then typed a short reply:

**Subject:** Re: Bug

Bug here. Would like to meet, but need proof you're Tt. Am willing to reciprocate if needed.

A minute or two later, a reply popped up as a private message. My heart started pounding as I read through it.

**Subject** : Re:Bug

Proof? Last night you got yourself caught in a tussle between the big guy and the angry guy. Big guy isn't nice to dogs and I told B to be careful with her pups around him. Good enough?

G R and me will meet you at the same spot we crossed paths last night, k? Don't have to get gussied up if you catch my drift. Rest of us will be in casual wear.

If we meet at 3 will that give you enough time to get there from library with everything you need? let me know

Ta ta

I had to keep myself from bolting away from the computer. Tattletale knew where I was. _How?_ Had the Case 53 tipped her off somehow? That couldn't be right, Tattletale hadn't known him from earlier, and she seemed kind of spooked by him. They might have met again after that, but that seemed wildly unlikely. Besides, I'd been monitoring him since I'd logged in, and he hadn't stopped reading or moved a single step.

I'd wanted to use this contact as a way to gather information on this mysterious team, but this put a massive new wrinkle in that plan. The reference to getting 'gussied up' was clearly about costumes, implying they wouldn't be wearing any and expected me to do the same. A chance to see their unmasked faces was too good to pass up, which made me suspect a trap.

The contrast between my experience last night and my research on PHO earlier was stark. Information really was a precious commodity in the cape scene, that much was obvious. It was kind of crazy just how little concrete information there was on capes, despite the news constantly being filled with superhero interviews, famous villain trials, cape fights, and things like that.

The Undersiders were a different story. I could find out more about them, if I took this conversation with Tattletale further. It was so tempting, but the thought also terrified me.

On the plus side, if I went I could get more information on the Undersiders and gain a lot of credit with the heroes. On the minus side... meeting villains, even ones that were acting grateful, brought with it a chance of injury or death.

Well, the latter prospect held much less sting since last night. Going out in costume was always going to carry _that_ particular risk.

I typed out a simple reply, saying I'd see her at three, but I hesitated before sending it, deliberating on whether it was a trap or not.

Before I could make my choice, the choice was made for me.

My powers informed me the Case 53 was on the move. When he started walking, I startled so hard I nearly fell out of my chair.

 _Fuck,_ he was heading towards me.

The redneck-looking young guy in the station next to me cleared his throat. "Hey, you okay?"

I cringed, realizing I'd gone rigid and had been staring off in the distance. "Um, yeah, it's just a migraine," I said lamely, feeling my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

"I can sympathize," the guy muttered.

No time for second guessing. I quickly clicked SEND on my message and exited out of the website. I fled the computer stations as quickly as I could without drawing undue attention to myself, and ducked out of sight into the nearby magazine and newspaper section just as the Case 53 came into view of the bank of computers. My heart was hammering, and I was starting to sweat. I felt trapped, and that was far too close to the locker for comfort.

In the back of my mind, I realized my panic wasn't really logical. The Case 53 hadn't attacked me yesterday. He'd had a gun and he didn't even point it at me once, so it wasn't like he was going to attack me on sight, even if he _did_ somehow recognize me out of costume. I forced myself to take deep, calming breaths.

I could handle this. Even if push came to shove, I could take control of his body. Or at least, I could try. His biology was bizarre, but it felt like my power could seize control at any instant.

That, more than any amount of logic or deep breathing, calmed me down.

I could feel the Case 53 stop at the computer lab, sitting down at the computer I had just vacated. I couldn't even tell if that was a coincidence or not, because it was the only computer that was available.

I withdrew my attention from the cape, and started gathering a swarm, discreetly, just in case. Insects that could run as well as fly, like grasshoppers, I set to approach from the ground. Aerial insects like moths and horseflies I spaced widely, careful not to visibly congregate them in the air. I prioritized flying venomous insects, mobilizing the handful of beehives and hornet nests in the area to make their way to the library.

A honeybee can fly at twenty miles an hour, as fast as an Olympian could sprint. When bugs were heading consistently in one direction, they could cover a lot of ground surprisingly quickly. It didn't take long to marshal my forces, and I used the first arrivals to probe the library for subtle entry points.

 _There_. A space where an air filter had been squashed slightly from a defect or careless installation, leaving a gap. Bugs flowed into the ventilation system. I had my swarm, and it was ready to come through the vents at a moment's notice. I was as ready as I'd ever be.

I returned my attention to the Case 53. I couldn't read his thoughts, and trying to use my power to get a look through his eyes just resulted in blinding pain, deafening sound, and a splitting headache. It was even worse than trying to see and hear through a bug's senses. Nothing useful.

I risked a peek at him. He was hunched over the keyboard and staring intensely at the monitor, typing something into the computer. I'd exited the website, I was sure of it—so whatever he was doing, it probably wasn't anything to do with me, unless he checked the search history.

I picked up the nearest magazine with capes on the cover—the _Atlantic_ , not that I intended to actually read it—and I flipped it open, turning a few pages.

I glanced up regularly to check what the Case 53 was doing. The web page he was looking at was in the distinctive colors and format of PHO, which neither confirmed nor ruled out anything. After a few minutes of browsing, he left PHO and was looking at a news feed which had pictures of the cordoned-off street where we'd fought Lung last night, and as I watched, he brought up a new tab and began what appeared to be an image search. All of them showed various men's faces, some the same, others clearly different people.

I was confused for a minute, but then it occurred to me that as an amnesiac, he might be searching for _himself_. I couldn't make out what he'd typed into the search field, and felt a little guilty for trying to. Apparently he didn't find what he was looking for, because after a minute or two of scrolling down the search results, he gave a little grunt of disgust and cleared the search field by rapidly jabbing the backspace key with unnecessary force.

After a moment in which he seemed to stew in his frustration, he began searching some kind of directory with tiny print. I left him to it, going deeper into the magazine shelves.

What was I supposed to do now? I could call Armsmaster. He said that he would handle this new cape. But we were at a public library, way too many people were around, and I couldn't effectively hide from him while using the payphone. More importantly, he wasn't in costume—did calling the PRT and Protectorate down on his head count as outing a cape's civilian identity? There were _laws_ against that kind of thing.

This was ridiculous. The Case 53 wasn't doing anything overtly _bad,_ aside from sitting with terrible posture and having unfortunate fashion sense, and if those things counted as villainy, then they ought to throw _me_ in the Birdcage right alongside him. Sure, fighting Lung with no holds barred was really extreme, but it was Lung who attacked us first, thinking we were with the Empire Eighty-Eight, and you couldn't exactly hold back against an enemy like that.

Maybe he could still be a neo-nazi racist, just by coincidence, but if he wasn't...

I was sick of this whole notion of judging new capes to be heroes or villains at a glance, without even _asking_ us first. Maybe I was biased—I'd been assumed to be a villain by Lung, then the Undersiders, and then _Armsmaster_ of all people. Even so, having a personal bias didn't change the fact that it was wrong to judge a book by its cover.

From there, a plan formed in my head. I directed a large hornet to me. I went downstairs, looking for something to write with, and found a suggestion box with one of those little golf pencils. I tore off a small strip from the suggestion sheet, and wrote a message in tiny block letters:

THANKS FOR YESTERDAY. WANT TO TALK. MEET ME OUTSIDE.

I handed the strip to the hornet, and flew it up to the ceiling where it was less likely to be seen.

Correspondence by bug. It would keep my identity safe while I could get more information about Brockton Bay's new Case 53, and then I would be able to go to the meeting with the Undersiders and get more information on them as well. The word Armsmaster had used rang in my head—he called even the slightest details _invaluable_. The sheer weight and import of what I was about to do made my arms break out into goosebumps.

This would take a bit of finesse, and more than a little luck. But if this worked, it would be more than worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a commenter mentioned being unfamiliar with Worm, I became more self-conscious of the few paragraphs at the beginning, which glides over several canon chapters' worth of events, so I reworked it a bit. Hopefully, that compressed timeline will help refresh veteran readers' memories without being too overbearing, while also being accessible to people unfamiliar with Worm.
> 
> Next chapter we rejoin Alex's POV, and after that, we hit the arc interlude to end Incubation and set sail away from canon events for good. Thanks for reading!


	7. Incubation 1.7

**Incubation 1.7**

Alex couldn't shake a feeling of apprehension around the other denizens of the Brockton Bay Central Library.

He wasn't concerned for his own physical safety, of course, but there was simply no way he could get used to the inconvenient fact that most of them smelled even more appetizing than a perfect steak on the grill, a temptation which was only magnified by his intense, aggravating hunger. From some of the looks he got, Alex was almost certain that his predatory instincts showed on his face, no matter how hard he tried to maintain a cool, indifferent expression. After a while, he gave up on acting natural and kept his hood pulled down low to try to minimize eye contact.

Ironically, Alex was the least bothered by homeless people that reeked of piss and alcohol, and by little old ladies and teenagers who drenched themselves in perfume or body spray. Conversely, hygienic adults were the absolute worst to be around, so he spent most of his morning in the blessedly musty-smelling reference section, which he had mostly to himself.

Immersing himself in parahuman research, Alex crammed information on parahumans like his life depended on it, because it absolutely did. He had mixed success.

The broad strokes were simple enough to understand. There were different parahuman power classifications, but all of them seemed to be different manifestations of the same phenomenon. All the classifications underwent what the scientific literature called a 'Trigger Event,' and the only discernible differences between parahumans stemmed from the circumstances behind the trigger—and since no two trigger events were exactly the same, no two powers were exactly the same, with few exceptions.

Brutes, Movers, and Changers like Alex himself were pretty self-explanatory. Blasters and Shakers both operated at range, with the latter affecting whole areas with an effect, and the former being more targeted. Strikers were the opposite, having touch-based powers. Masters controlled minions or could affect the minds of others, and likewise Strangers had some sort of stealth or infiltration ability, making both classifications nightmarish for institutions, which often employed specialized Master/Stranger emergency protocols. The most unintuitive were Breaker and Trump powers—Breakers were limited by having to transform into some kind of altered state to use their powers, and Trumps were incredibly rare parahumans that had powers that affected other powers.

Thinkers and Tinkers were in a class all their own, and Alex assigned them the highest threat level, _ceteris paribus._ Outwardly, Thinkers and Tinkers were no different than ordinary humans, but their powers were almost completely unpredictable, since human minds were completely unequipped to understand how Thinkers processed information or how Tinkers built their nigh-magical technology.

After satisfying his initial scientific curiosity, Alex really wanted to know what could _possibly_ have possessed thousands of grown adults to think that gallivanting around like comic book superheroes and supervillains was a sane idea. The answer was surprisingly more nuanced than he'd first expected.

For one thing, the whole "cape" culture was mostly a Western phenomenon—in Russia, parahumans were folded into the military, and in most of Africa, they ruled as warlords. For another, the conceit didn't really take root until a few years after Scion, when the first superheroes started to become public. The whole show of wearing a mask or costume and going by a cape name was apparently both a familiar means of assuring the panicking public that powers didn't make them prophets or gods, and also a way of distinguishing parahumans from normal law enforcement while maintaining anonymity. In the decades that followed, the initially artificial conceit had somehow grown into an almost entirely unironic, self-perpetuating subculture with its own unwritten rules and informal codes of conduct. Once the superheroes had actually started to be taken seriously and even become idolized for the amazing things they did, the culture had spread to parahuman criminals as well, who used the reputations of their masked personas more like a clout game.

The whole masquerade was still utterly preposterous to Alex, and he still wanted absolutely nothing to do with it, but at least now he could understand the public relations stunt for what it was and operate accordingly.

Alex wished he could devote his whole attention to the vitally important and downright fascinating information he was gathering, but the problem was that his hunger was a constant distraction gnawing at his thoughts. The more esoteric and technical the research, the more difficult it was for him to maintain focus. He could at least memorize parahuman terminology and definitions—things like Manton limitations, Sechen ranges, Case 53 jargon, and so on—but his attention span was too short to tackle the harder abstract theories and critical thinking, particularly where Tinkertech was concerned.

In frustrating fits and starts, Alex's knowledge framework started to fill out, and eventually he was struck by two important realizations: first, that Lung knew amazingly little about how parahumans actually functioned, and second, that scientists knew amazingly little about how parahumans actually interacted with each other.

That was actually a good thing, Alex decided. The fact that there was almost no overlap between science's theoretical knowledge and Lung's practical experience meant that he could more efficiently glean the best of both worlds, and then integrate them. Or at least, he'd have an easier time doing so when his hunger wasn't demanding his attention _every five fucking seconds_.

Unfortunately, upon further research, there seemed to be no convenient parahuman shortcuts for his aching hunger. As it turned out, although every parahuman was unique, most parahuman matter-duplicators, such as Spree in nearby Boston, produced organic or inorganic constructs that rapidly degraded on a molecular level, rendering their biomass useless as building material or economic products. Alex _really_ didn't feel like finding out what would happen to him if he assimilated a clone into himself and that didn't stop the matter degradation. Alex had been extremely lucky that consuming Lung mid-transformation had apparently stopped the shrinking process, however that worked in Lung's unique case.

Tinkers were another avenue Alex explored, but only a few worked with organic matter. Of those that did, rogue and heroic Tinkers like Toybox and Dragon were out, since Alex doubted they were morons who couldn't put two and two together about what really happened to Lung. Villainous biotinkers were a more viable option, but those ran into similar secrecy and blackmail problems, plus finding some way to pay them, and being chained to them forever due to Tinkertech maintenance requirements. Availability was also an issue—Bonesaw was obviously not an option, and although Blasto was both nearby and a biotinker, his specialty was in plants, so his tech might not even work for Alex. Blasto was still worth a shot, once Alex got enough money to ensure discretion and came up with a convincing lie about what he'd be using the human flesh for.

It was good to have some kind of long-term solution in mind, but that did nothing for Alex's immediate problems. In the short term, that meant he was back to Plan A: consume criminals that no one would miss or care about.

There was only so much Alex could get from books, and after he finished reading up about the parahuman-generated matter limitations, he was forced back to the bank of computers once again to research another topic. That put him in a sour mood, because the close proximity to other people forced him to breathe through his mouth in order to avoid their distracting aroma.

On top of that, Alex had been avoiding this particular avenue of research—himself. He'd already searched for his name on criminal and parahuman databases to make sure he wasn't a wanted fugitive, and found out that there were no outstanding federal warrants for him, nor any state warrants for New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, Delaware, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, or Connecticut. However, he hadn't gone any further than that. In the back of his mind, he was worried that he'd have no choice but to sacrifice his old life, thanks to what he'd become, and what he would need to do in order to survive.

Alex let out a private sigh and walked out of the reference section to find a computer. There was only one computer free, situated between a woman in a red jacket and a plaid-wearing hick. Just his luck that they both looked clean and probably smelled heavenly.

Steeling himself, Alex held his breath as he sat down, the thin metal chair squealing annoyingly. He logged into the computer and tried to be subtle about breathing through his mouth.

Parahumans Online was the first place he checked for any mentions of an Alexander James Mercer, but when that came up with nothing, he tried a simple search engine. It was some weird third-party search engine Alex had never heard of, but it was the default, so he tried it anyway.

As it turned out, he needn't have felt apprehensive before. Alexander James Mercer had no online presence. None whatsoever. He might as well have not existed. Alex scrolled through page after page of pictures and results, but nothing matched him. Nothing came even close. Other people shared his name, but none shared his face.

Alex felt a pang of... something, not exactly loss, but more like _aimlessness_.

If it weren't for his goddamned stomach, Alex would be totally without motivation or purpose. He had no ambitions, no friends, no family. If he'd ever had those things, it hardly mattered now. The connections were gone.

Damn it, Alex was _not_ about to start feeling lonely and sorry for himself over things he couldn't even remember. He was just about to quit in frustration when a hornet appeared right in front of the monitor, carrying a tiny banner in its legs. It hovered in the air for a moment before dropping the slip of paper daintily on the keyboard, waving its little arms, and then zooming off.

"Huh," said Alex, a word which roughly translated in his thoughts to _what the ever-living fuck!?_

Alex forced himself not to start cursing explosively like he wanted to, conscious of the other people sitting next to him, but oh, it was tempting.

 _I just got used to normal surroundings again, and now this Alice in Wonderland shit comes right the fuck out of nowhere!_ Alex railed internally.

After a few seconds of taking hissing breaths of air through his grit teeth, Alex managed to calm himself down a bit. If he took things in perspective, this was maybe a 3 out of 10 on his newly calibrated weird-bullshit-ometer. It certainly couldn't contend with gang leaders who transformed into dragons or splitting into a writhing horde of man-eating tentacles, but still, this was deeply, _profoundly_ fucking odd, and Alex didn't have a cached response for how to cope with it. He was torn between wanting to despair at the chaotic state of his reality, and total refusal to take such ludicrous events seriously.

Since he couldn't do anything else, Alex picked up the torn slip of paper. It read, THANKS FOR YESTERDAY. I WANT TO TALK. MEET ME OUTSIDE.

 _Yesterday...?_ Was someone thanking him for offing Lung? His recollection—or recollections, plural—of the latter half of that fight were a bit fuzzy, but he certainly didn't remember doing anyone a favor worth mentioning.

Then it hit Alex, and he felt stupid for not realizing right away. This must be the work of that self-proclaimed hero in the bug costume from earlier. It all made perfect sense if you just remembered that the world had _lost its fucking mind_ back in the eighties when Scion first appeared.

Lung had assumed the bug cape and Alex were both Empire members, but he hadn't recognized her or the black costume she wore as belonging to any team or faction in particular, so she was probably telling the truth about her affiliation. However, Alex wasn't at all sure that the bug cape contacting him was a good thing, considering that polite society didn't take kindly to cannibals like him.

At least Alex was fairly certain no one had been around to see him eating Lung, but then again, Lung's disappearance was going to get noticed sooner or later, and that meant at the bare minimum he'd be wanted for some questioning from the white hats.

Alex weighed several options for how to respond to this. Eating the bug cape to ensure her silence seemed like a _highly_ appealing option right then, but his rational mind kicked in a second later and pointed out that she was hardly the only witness to his fight with Lung, so eating her wouldn't actually solve his problem, just make it worse.

No, what Alex really needed to do was construct a counter-narrative, some plausible alternative chain of events to deflect attention elsewhere, so that he could get away with gorging himself without any undue suspicion. Besides, the bug cape had helped him before, and her power was completely harmless to a parahuman of Alex's caliber, so there was negligible risk in accepting.

Logging off, Alex got up from his seat, and made his way to the door. Along the way, a bright red little ladybug took up a position about an arm's length in front of him, moving as he did, maintaining a constant distance.

Alex made a small choking noise as he stifled a laugh. Was this supposed to be his guide? Holy hell, what a joke of a power.

As he followed the weirdly on-target ladybug out the doors, Alex remembered the ABB enforcers choking on bugs last night, and Lung's own experience getting bitten and stung all over his body. Alex revised his estimation of the bug cape's threat level upwards slightly. This power wasn't completely harmless to ordinary, unprotected humans, but it still wasn't very impressive by any standard, and the important thing was that it probably wasn't a threat to him.

The ladybug led Alex around the side of the building, adjacent to a narrow lawn between the parking lot and the building where tall maple trees had been planted intermittently. Nobody was around, but the ladybug hovered between one of the trees and one of the structural columns and made little midair circles, then landed on the concrete in front of Alex's feet.

There, it was joined by a variety of other arthropods, which were coming together to spell out words in big block letters. In spite of himself, Alex couldn't help but be fascinated by the trick—these hundreds of different bugs were all perfectly coordinated with each other. It was captivating to watch a line of five beetles form an 'A' at the same time a single centipede contorted itself to form an 'S'. The letters in the message were all formed at once, instead of sequentially like handwriting. Together, they wrote out,

ARE YOU FEELING OKAY AFTER LAST NIGHT?

Alex looked around. He could faintly smell humans around, but there was no sign of the bug-controller or anyone else. When he looked back down, the message had changed.

YOU CAN SAY YOUR ANSWERS OUT LOUD. NO ONE IS AROUND, NO CAMERAS EITHER.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Have you been _following_ me?" Alex demanded. The bugs rearranged themselves.

NO. WAS HERE TO DO CAPE BUSINESS ON A PUBLIC PC. SAW YOU AT THE COMPUTER.

"Okay, let's say I buy that. What do you want?" Alex said curtly.

LUNG, THE PARAHUMAN FROM LAST NIGHT, THOUGHT YOU WERE A NAZI. ARE YOU?

Alex snorted in derision. "Fuck no."

The bugs wrote GOOD ANSWER. Alex noted with some amusement that the ladybug he'd followed out here was used to form the period. Then the bugs began shifting again.

WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN YOU AND LUNG?

Alex felt a thrill of danger, and debated whether to respond. The bug cape had still been around during the end of the fight, or so he'd thought—admittedly, he wasn't in an observant state of mind at the time, much less making note of when people and giant monsters came and left the fight. But if the cape really didn't know what had happened to Lung, then Alex sure as hell wasn't going to enlighten her with the gory details.

"Well, I'm here, so obviously I managed to get away. Part of the roof collapsed on us while we were fighting inside, so I took the opportunity to break through the wall and run out the back. Not sure what happened to Lung after, but we were both pretty fucked up at that point. With any luck, he died in his own fire." Alex lied, secretly pleased that he didn't have to change many details from the truth.

I MET ARMSMASTER AFTER THE BATTLE. HE THINKS LUNG ESCAPED TOO.

"Too bad," Alex said, shrugging as if he didn't care, but inwardly his thoughts were racing. At least now he knew what the heroes believed, more or less, but he doubted that would remain the official line for very long.

The bugs writhed with apparent uncertainty for a few long seconds, then formed new words.

DO YOU HAVE A NAME?

Alex considered offering a pseudonym, but this cape had already proven to be an ally of convenience against Lung, and it wasn't like he had any civilian identity to protect. Besides, he was already completely unmasked to this wannabe heroine, so that cat was out of the bag. "I'm… Alex. Who are you?" he asked.

The bugs rapidly shifted, this time.

SORRY, I MEANT A CAPE NAME, NOT YOUR REAL NAME. I WON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT YOUR CIVILIAN IDENTITY—

There was a pause as more bugs joined the others to fill out the rest of the sentence.

—UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO.

Alex groaned in frustration at himself. Apparently, his access to Lung's abstract knowledge of cape etiquette and the 'unwritten rules' didn't really translate to Alex himself having a reflexive understanding of what that meant in practice—such as not giving out civilian names if it seemed to be fishing for reciprocation.

"I don't have any cape name, because I'm _not_ a cape. I'm a _parahuman,_ nothing more." Alex said insistently. "I'm just Alex, to you and everyone else, so don't go spreading around that I have powers. I've been doing my research, and I can tell you right now that _nobody_ tolerates a snitch, heroes or villains. The last thing you want is to be known as someone who's cavalier with civilian identities. Got it?"

I UNDERSTAND. I PROMISE I WON'T TELL ANYONE, FOR YOUR SAKE AND MINE.

Alex nodded. "Good. Now it's my turn to ask a question."

GO AHEAD.

He took a shot in the dark. "Did you have anything to do with the Undersiders showing up? I still can't figure out why you were both there. Were you tracking them, or were they following you or something?"

The bugs seemed to twitch.

NO. I ONLY MET THEM YESTERDAY, BUT THEY THOUGHT I WAS ON THEIR SIDE BECAUSE I ACCIDENTALLY HELPED THEM.

"What, they just _happened_ to be around too?" Alex said incredulously. "Four different sides, all showing up for one big clusterfuck of a fight? You've got to be joking."

I WISH. THAT CLUSTERFUCK WAS MY DEBUT ON THE CAPE SCENE.

"Some debut," said Alex. After a moment's hesitation, he grudgingly added, "Thanks for helping with the thugs. I would have been fine, but I know you risked your own hide. Since I fought Lung, and that helped you escape, let's call it even."

SURE. I HAVE A QUESTION, SORRY IF IT'S PERSONAL, BUT DID YOU REMEMBER HOW YOU GOT HERE? OR ANYTHING AT ALL?

Alex felt angry at the question, and he let it show in his voice, biting off every word. "No. I only have memories since last night."

The bugs' response was swift, and even more came to join them.

I'M SO SORRY. I'D LIKE TO HELP IF I CAN. ARMSMASTER AND I BOTH THINK YOU MIGHT BE WHAT'S CALLED A CASE 53.

"I already looked that up, and yeah, I think it applies," Alex said, forcing his temper back down. "I still don't know if I have the omega tattoo, but it's not like I've taken the time to check everywhere. What's your stake in this, anyway? Why do you care?"

There was a much longer pause this time. BECAUSE BROCKTON BAY IS DANGEROUS, AND THE GANGS MIGHT TRY TO HURT OR RECRUIT YOU. I'M TRYING TO BE A HERO, AND THAT MEANS HELPING PEOPLE. YOU COULD BE A HERO TOO, IF YOU WANTED.

Alex considered the bug cape's words. The idea of him being a hero was completely out of the question, of course, but leading her on might prove useful. Reading between the lines, she seemed to be offering to team up with him, and a parahuman who could go to the law enforcement and put in a good word or an alibi for Alex could potentially be a crucial card to keep up his sleeve. Alex decided to turn her down, but in such a way that it left the door open if he needed to use it.

"Look, I'm not interested in getting dragged into some crazy feud between people flying around in their pajamas. I just want to be left out of it. That's all. Maybe we could do business with each other, but I'm not getting involved in anything unless there's something in it for me," Alex said carefully.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROGUE? THERE AREN'T MANY OF THOSE. I'VE HEARD THEY GET GRIEF FROM BOTH SIDES. VILLAINS LIKE TO TARGET THEM.

Alex folded his arms over his chest. "They can try. Was there anything else?"

WHAT WERE YOU LOOKING FOR AT THE LIBRARY?

Alex felt a flash of irritation at the prying, but the question seemed harmless enough to answer. "I have amnesia, so what do you _think?_ I was trying to look myself up and find out more about these freaky superpowers, but all I've got to go on is my name and birth date. I got that from my driver's license, which has since been incinerated along with my wallet. No luck finding any records of myself, though. It's like I don't even exist."

WILL YOU BE OK? I HAVE ENOUGH MONEY ON ME TO BUY YOU LUNCH AND BUS FARE TO GET TO THE PRT HEADQUARTERS. THE HEROES TAKE CARE OF CASE 53 REFUGEES.

Alex waved a hand dismissively. "I'll be fine. I can make my own way there if I ever decide I want to take their charity, with all the strings it has attached."

OK. I'LL LET YOU KNOW IF I HEAR ANYTHING. HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU? ARE THE PARAHUMANS ONLINE BOARDS OK?

Alex lifted his shoulders in a tiny shrug. "Fine. Why not. Don't expect me to check too regularly, though."

I CAN LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR "A FROM BB" USING MY THROWAWAY HANDLE Bug. I CAN ASK FOR CONFIRMATION FROM WHATEVER ACCOUNT YOU MAKE.

"That should work," Alex said, noting that 'Bug' was written differently, indicating the B was capitalized and the rest were lowercase. Then he added, "I think we're done here, Bug."

I THINK SO TOO. PLEASE STAY SAFE. GOODBYE, ALEX.

Alex turned and walked back into the library, thinking about the fight with Lung and his new parahuman contact. They had made a pretty good team in yesterday's fight, actually. He hadn't missed how Bug had successfully blinded and disabled the gang members, and Lung's memories provided ample context for how devastating her initial strike was. Bug could attack from a distance while Alex could not, and unlike Bug, he could get in close and hit hard. They covered each others' weaknesses well. Lung and Oni Lee had synergized in a similar way, and he knew from experience that powers which worked well together could overcome whole _teams_ of poorly-matched powers.

Alex dismissed the thought. As nice as it would be to have a parahuman lackey, he had to conduct his business in private. Tonight, after the library closed, he was going to go out hunting for the first time.

At that thought, Alex's tendrils coiled inside him, thrashing in anticipation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Alex. Must you make it so obvious that Charisma is your dump stat? Since you're at the library already, perhaps you should check out ‘How To Make Friends and Influence People’ in the psychology section, or perhaps ‘Will I Have a Friend?’ in the children's section would be more your speed. Baby steps.
> 
> Coming up next: Interlude 1.L!


	8. Incubation 1.L

**Incubation 1.L**

"We _cannot_ afford a repeat performance of Spitfire here," said Brian as he grasped the rusty rungs of the fire escape and led the way up.

 _There it is,_ Lisa thought to herself. _Translation: do try not to fuck up this time._

"Rachel isn't here," Alec said, holding his hands out like lopsided measuring scales before following Brian up. "I'd say our odds are doubled. At _least."_

"I wouldn't mind being turned down by Spitfire so much if she hadn't turned right around and joined Faultline's crew," Lisa groused, shifting her grip on the plastic lunchbox she was holding as she went after Alec.

"Eh, she was no big loss anyway." said Alec. "Her power is basically just a flamethrower, but without the hassle of having to wear the fuel tank backpack thingie."

"I can think of a few times where that might have come in handy," Brian grunted as he levered himself up onto the roof. Alec and Lisa followed suit, much less gracefully.

"Bug girl is a better bet anyway," said Lisa, primly straightening out her denim skirt. "Her power might not seem like all that on paper, but in practice, it's powerful _and_ diverse. You'll see."

"Speaking of bets, what do you wanna bet Bug is gonna show up in her civvies?" Alec asked.

Lisa didn't even hesitate. "Fifty against."

"You're on!" Alec said, eliciting a groan from Brian.

Lisa smiled. Even after all this time, it was fun to get a rise out of Brian. And taking money from Alec, of course. She was a good ninety percent sure that bug girl would be in costume, based on the profile her power gave her.

That was the rub, though. When Lisa could only afford to use her power maybe an hour or two out of the week without suffering terrible migraines, she had to ration it very carefully, leaving plenty of space for unforeseen complications and new situations, such as this recruitment. The rest she filled in with educated guesswork based on information she already had—but that made it all the more fun when she pulled it off.

The bug girl was a gamble, but one that seemed like she would be worth the risk and the expenditure of Lisa's resources.

What the big boss Coil didn't know—and what Lisa wouldn't tell him or the others if she could get away with it—was that Bug considered herself a hero. Lisa had found that out when Grue had assumed Bug was a villain, and the girl had reacted, but still played along with Lisa's message. That was _interesting,_ and she thought it bore investigation.

The three of them reached the other edge of the abandoned apartment building's roof, and Lisa paused to look out over the street. By day, the signs of battle were impossible to ignore. There were smooth and smeared sections of melted and re-solidified asphalt, and it looked like a child's finger painting from up above. About twenty trails of footprints and several tire tracks from the cops had been faintly pressed into the pavement while it had still been hot and sticky. There were also strange, widely-spaced gouges in the pavement in front of the fire-gutted apartment building across the street, and another set leading away from the scene, each one looking for all the world like a giant irregular hand had seized a fistful of pavement and crumpled it.

That sure as hell didn't come from the dogs. Lisa wondered what had happened here after they left. She let her mental walls come down, and just for an instant, she allowed her power to flow.

_Lung fought inside building at the end of the battle. No scorched footprints indicative of Lung leaving building. Lung deceased, body destroyed._

Lisa shut down the line of inference, her stomach doing a backflip. Last night, her power had warned her that the fight between Lung and the new Brute was going to end with one of them dead, and it had told her that the new Brute was 'dangerous,' and not much more than that. She hadn't expected _this_ result; no Brocktonite would have. They'd collectively lived under Lung's shadow for so long, he was basically part of the landscape, as intractable as the Bay itself. But now he was dead.

This had the potential to be very, very bad.

"Lisa?" Brian said from behind her.

She startled slightly, and hid the twitch by smoothly turning her attention to him.

"You look like you've seen a ghost. Should we be worried?" Brian asked.

"Not immediately," Lisa said, her tone grave. "Power's telling me that Lung bit it last night."

That statement elicited a suitably agog reaction from Brian and Alec, which made Lisa feel a little better.

"Holy shit, _really?"_ said Alec, his voice breaking on the last word.

 _"_ _Really_ really," said Lisa.

"How confident are you?" Brian asked.

Lisa felt a little flash of indignation at him for questioning her, but at least he seemed to be taking her seriously enough to look worried.

"I'm pretty sure," Lisa said honestly. "And if Lung really did die, it was probably the new guy who killed him. He was giving off major psycho vibes last night."

"Fuck. The whole Bay's gonna go nuts when this gets out," Brian said, nervously running his hand through his cornrows. "Does anyone else know?"

"Just the newbie who killed him, and I'm almost certain the bug girl doesn't know. The Protectorate is totally clueless. More than usual, anyway. I was watching the PRT surveillance cam soap opera earlier, and they only think Lung escaped. Whatever happened to him didn't leave much behind." said Lisa.

Brian gave a low whistle. _"_ _Damn._ We should, uh, not go spreading around that we were involved, then. I don't want 'accessory to murder' added to my rap sheet."

"Hey, we didn't see it happen, so it's got nothing to do with us," said Alec, miming zipping his lips.

"As a matter of fact, we don't even know Lung's dead." Brian added with a decisive nod.

Lisa felt a twinge of annoyance, but it was hardly the worst secret she'd been expected to keep. She would have liked showing off to more than just the boys, though. And Coil, come to think.

"Should we tell Rachel and Bug, though?" Alec asked.

Brian pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "I swear to God, Alec, just think about that for _two seconds."_

"...Okay, so maybe that wouldn't help our alibi. Got it." Alec conceded with a shrug. "Let us never speak of this again."

Silence reigned on the rooftop for a few seconds.

"This is really fucking with my head," said Brian.

"Totally," Alec agreed.

"I mean, it's _Lung,"_ Lisa chimed in.

"It must have been like a freak accident. Like that one guy who got cut by a rooster at a cockfight and bled out. Or that ancient Greek dude that had a tortoise dropped on his head by an eagle. Herodotus? Hippocampus? Something like that." Alec mused.

Brian and Lisa exchanged a bewildered look.

"What the _hell_ kind of shows have you been watching, Alec?" Brian asked.

Lisa caught a faint noise and held up a hand, then cupped it to her ear. "Never mind that. Our guest of honor has arrived."

Alec groaned. "Oh no, she's _punctual_. It'll be bad for our rep if we're not fashionably late."

"Let's at least _try_ to appear professional, please," Brian muttered.

"Professional? Did you forget we're in our civvies, O Fearless Leader?" Alec snarked.

"Anything we should know before the pitch?" Brian asked, ignoring Alec.

"No," Lisa shook her head. "She'll be skittish, at least at first. Just keep doing what you're doing, projecting calm and competence."

Brian straightened a little at that.

Lisa smiled to herself. Boy egos were so _easy_.

They all watched with quiet tension and forced nonchalance as the bug girl climbed the same fire escape to the roof. Alec pulled out a can of coke he'd stuffed into his white jacket's pocket and popped the top. The _crack-hiss_ of the can was the only noise as the three of them examined the new arrival by the light of day.

Her costume was truly impressive. It was black and skintight, interspersed with thicker panels of armor that had a glittering, subtly iridescent pattern of shells that looked woven together like carbon fiber. Lisa let her power give it a brief once-over.

_Costume constructed of dragline spider silk. Stronger tensile strength than Kevlar, but higher elasticity. Armor panels detachable, semi-rigid, absorbs and distributes impact via network of interwoven and overlapping beetle carapaces held together by layered silk. Costume too intricate to be woven by normal means. Costume constructed by arthropods directed by cape._

Lisa blinked in surprise. She'd been impressed by the costume before, but now she was downright jealous. The girl had amazingly fine control with her power, and the mindset to leverage that in useful ways.

The skinny girl approached them across the roof and stopped a dozen feet away, examining the three of them in turn. Lisa didn't need her power to tell her that the girl felt completely out of her depth. Her body language was stilted and awkward. She didn't seem to know what to do with her hands, and she shifted from foot to foot.

"Looks like I win," Lisa said, looking to Alec. "Told you so. Pay up."

"Yeah, yeah," Alec grumbled, fishing out a bunch of loose bills from his pocket. He slapped two twenties and a ten into her waiting hand.

"Thank you," Lisa singsonged.

"You bet on if I'd show up?" the bug girl guessed.

"We bet on if you'd show up in costume," Lisa corrected, holding up the money jauntily.

"It was a sucker's bet anyway, showing up in costume is just common sense," Brian said, giving the bug girl a charming smile. He held out his hand for her to shake. "Hey, I'm Brian."

She took his hand, her head turning from him to the rest, and Lisa pictured she was making a confused expression behind her mask.

"You can keep calling me Bug, I guess, at least until I think of something better, and if this isn't some elaborate trick," she said tactlessly.

Brian shrugged and said, "That works."

"I'm Lisa, glad to see you made it out okay," Lisa chirped, introducing herself with a little wave and a smile.

"I'm Alec, and Bitch is Rachel." said Alec, taking a swig of his soda.

"Rachel chose to sit out this little meeting," Brian explained. "She doesn't agree with it on principle."

"What _is_ the purpose of this meeting?" Bug asked, then attempted to answer her own question. "Getting to be on friendly terms with the local capes?"

"Got it in one," Lisa said, smiling even wider. Almost unbidden, her power quickly filled in some details.

_Avoidance of direct eye contact. Right-handedness and head tilt up and to the left denotes recall of recent visual memory. Has had a similar meeting shortly before this._

"Hold on... you've done this song and dance before, just in the time since we first met, haven't you? I'm impressed." Lisa said.

"Yeah," Bug admitted. "I actually just came across the other cape from last night. He's new, too."

_Vocal emphasis and word choice indicates belief in a true chance encounter, plausible reason for being in same place. New cape late twenties, early thirties, not found at school. Found at library._

Lisa's smile faltered slightly. "So, you just happened to run into each other at the library? What a coincidence. We—"

 _"_ _Lisa,"_ Brian interrupted, giving her a stern look. "Stop trying to show off, you're going to scare our friend here."

Lisa flashed Bug a disarming smile. "Sorry. My point is, the PRT's got a real bug up their ass about your new acquaintance—no offense, Bug—so, should we be worried about him?"

She hummed pensively. "Uh, probably not? I mean, he says that he's a rogue, and that he's not interested in fighting heroes or villains. He doesn't have a cape name. He's a bit rough around the edges, but as long as you don't threaten him, you should be fine."

Alec snorted derisively. "Famous last words. I don't trust the weirdo."

Lisa narrowed her eyes in confusion, and looked from Bug to Alec and back again. She let down the barriers to her power.

_Tone, body language indicate extreme revulsion. Both consider new cape to be inhuman, repulsive. Disgust stems from input from their parahuman senses._

"Huh. Why do you two have a problem with him?" Lisa asked.

"I hate people who mess with my power," Alec said with an abstracted frown. "And to my power, he feels all wrong and twisted up inside. It's gross."

"You noticed? It isn't—" Bug began, but then she changed tack. "Look, I'm not prejudiced—or I try not to be, but I saw the same thing, but in a lot more detail, I think, and it's hard to get used to. I did some research and I asked him about it, apparently he's one of the mutated amnesiac capes, a Case 53."

"Just great. That probably means he'll be joining Faultline and her crew by nightfall," Brian muttered.

"Faultline?" Bug echoed, sounding lost.

"Our most direct competitor," Lisa explained. "Her team are technically mercenaries, but they end up mostly doing criminal jobs. Her power isn't all that, but she's good at snapping up the Case 53s in town and adding them to her roster. Anyway, I'm curious, what does this new Case 53's mutations really look like? I've never seen any that weren't spectacular, so he must be quite something on the inside."

Bug considered the question for a few seconds, but adjectives seemed to fail her. At last, she just shuddered, then said, "He's like a dead body."

Alec looked up with renewed interest. "No shit, really?" he said eagerly. "If he's undead, that explains why my power is all screwy with him!"

"No! I mean, not literally, but it's hard to explain," Bug said defensively. "He just looks kind of like one. On the inside, he's sort of... rotted, or half-melted, or _infested_. There are these black, tendril-like things. I can't really do it justice, but I got a pretty good look."

Lisa focused her power on this new tidbit of information, but the response didn't come immediately, a warning sign that her power might be in danger of lapsing into speculation, or was already outright manufacturing information.

_Bug's power works on all organisms with simple enough nervous systems, including the Case 53. Case 53 has nonstandard, redundant, modular parallel neurology. Distributed network of simple ganglia linked to primary nervous system. Hive mind functioning as an individual consciousness._

As Lisa focused, Alec was saying something, but she'd been barely paying attention and missed the first part.

"—a little zombie apocalypse to liven things up, and now we have our very own Patient Zero for the outbreak! This is great!" Alec said, raising his hands to mime taking potshots with an invisible shotgun.

Brian smacked Alec's hands down. "Knock it off, Alec. You wouldn't last two seconds in a real zombie apocalypse—but then again, they only go after people with a brain."

Lisa gave Bug a conspiratorial glance and rolled her eyes at the antics of the boys. "Well, the important part is that if he's really a rogue, we probably don't have to worry about his animosity or competition."

"Let's just hope it stays that way," Brian replied. "The last thing we need is an enemy cape coming after us."

Bug nodded. "Yeah. That reminds me, I'm a little surprised you guys are taking the risk of meeting me out of costume."

Brian smiled, and it seemed a little self-deprecating. "It was my idea. Thought I'd make a gesture of trust."

That gave Bug pause. "And why would you need my trust?"

Brian seemed lost for words, then looked to Lisa for help. Well, looked like it was now or never. Lisa bent down and picked up the plastic lunchbox she'd carried to the roof.

"I said we owed you one. This is all yours, no strings attached." she said, holding out the lunchbox, which had the Triumvirate hero Alexandria's picture on the front. Lisa had chosen it for the irony value.

Bug tilted her head to get a better look at the lunchbox. "Is it a collectible or something?"

Lisa rolled her eyes at Bug's endearing naïveté. "Open it."

She took the lunchbox and tested its weight. She opened it, then froze looking down at the contents.

"Two grand," Lisa provided, as the bug girl gawked at the eight stacks of cash.

Bug quickly latched the lunchbox closed again, watching the three of them silently.

"So, what happens now is that you have two choices," Lisa explained. She couldn't quite resist framing it in a way that sounded ominous, but she figured if Bug was going to be scared off by Lisa's choice of words, she wouldn't have been a good fit anyway. She silently cleared her throat, then continued. "You can take that as a gift, a thank-you for saving our asses from Lung yesterday. And maybe as an incentive to count us among your friends when you're out and about, doing dastardly deeds."

Something about the way Bug tilted her head made Lisa think that she hadn't really understood.

"Between the egos, power struggles, grudges, and ideologies, there's few enough villains around who wouldn't attack us on sight," Lisa elaborated.

"And what's the other choice?" Bug asked.

This time, Brian answered the question. "You can take that as the first monthly installment of the pay you'd be earning as a member of the Undersiders."

"You get paid two thousand a _month?"_ Bug said, sounding shocked.

"No," Brian said quickly, trying to suppress a chuckle. "That's just what the boss pays us for being active members of the team. When we pull jobs, you'd get a cut. We make, uh, significantly more than that."

Lisa smiled, and Alec rolled his eyes at Bug's modesty as he lobbed his empty coke can off the roof. Lisa laughed out loud when she saw that Bug was mightily resisting the urge to chide him for littering.

Oddly, Bug seemed to twitch at the sound of Lisa's laughter, her posture becoming more withdrawn, almost like a cringing, whipped dog. Lisa stopped laughing immediately, and let her power flow for a brief moment.

_Laughter triggers negative emotion, associated with mockery. Victim of verbal, possibly physical abuse. Mistrustful of peers. Isolated, lonely, envious of group camaraderie, but now leaning against joining. Expects betrayal._

Well _that_ was fucking tragic. It pretty much killed Lisa's mood, which had already been wavering due to the whole Lung fiasco looming over everything like an approaching storm.

She could fix this. She _had_ to fix this somehow.

Everyone else was blissfully ignorant of Lisa's inner conflict. Bug continued the conversation after an awkward pause. "So, if Bitch isn't here, was she against this job offer?"

Brian's expression tightened. "We voted. She was the only one that didn't want us to make you the offer."

Alec scoffed. "She votes against _every_ recruitment."

"She doesn't want to split the money five ways," Brian told Bug. "But with you on the team, we might be able to pull more jobs, make more money even with a five-way split."

"So you want me on your team so you can expand your operations?" Bug said skeptically.

"Well, sort of," Brian hedged. "It's more about safety in numbers. We haven't been caught yet because we're cautious. We only take jobs we know we can pull off. We try not to make waves with the other villain groups, but as you've seen, that doesn't always work out. Rachel is our heavy hitter, but if she's taken out of commission, we're out of options. With all the other gangs and villain groups around, we need more firepower, more safety margin. More members means more people will leave us alone, and it'll allow us to operate more freely."

"I just don't know why you'd want _me_. I control bugs. I'm not going to be taking down Alexandria or Glory Girl or Aegis," Bug said, hugging her arms around her chest self-consciously.

Lisa shook her head. It was painful to see how much even smart people could completely lack self-awareness or self-esteem. She decided the best way to proceed was with a gentle boost to Bug's ego. "We wouldn't be here if you hadn't impressed us. You helped us fight Lung and took down five armed thugs singlehandedly. That's good enough for me," she said.

"It wasn't all that," said Bug. "You guys stopped me from getting killed. The Case 53, too. Why reach out to me instead of him?"

Lisa grimaced. That was a debate with Brian she did _not_ want to reopen, but she tried to sound gentle as she shot that idea down. "Honey, I can tell you right now that you brought Lung most of the way down in your opening salvo, he just didn't know it yet. You also got down there in melee range of him and came out of it alive. All that's more than entire _teams_ of capes have done before. And trust me on this, our whole 'teenage miscreants' theme buys us more leeway than you might think, and it wouldn't be a good idea to mess with that and our team dynamic by inviting a scary, grown-ass man to join the team."

Bug looked down at the lunchbox. "Okay. I just hope he isn't offended at not getting _'thanked'_ for fighting Lung too."

Well, shit. She had a point there.

Lisa exchanged a dire look with Brian, who nodded in silent agreement. Last night, she'd separately given Brian and Coil the rundown on what her power told her about the Brute—which wasn't hard to do, as the input was frustratingly short. Her power simply told her that he was an incredibly strong and highly mimetic shapeshifter with nonstandard anatomy. All her power had to say about his personal profile was that he was very dangerous and on the verge of losing control of himself. Now that she knew he was a Case 53, it made a bit more sense. Her power had never worked very well on Case 53s like Newter or Gregor the Snail for some unknown reason, and the short, vague warning it provided had spooked Lisa a bit, if she was being honest.

"You raise a good point. I think we'll set aside a nice thank-you gift for him, just in case we run into each other again," Lisa suggested with feigned sweetness.

"Oh, come on!" Alec said, intensely dispirited. "I can understand shelling out for Bug, but do we _really_ have to give up another chunk of change for the mutant freak with no memories? We're not a charit—"

Alec was interrupted by Brian lightly swatting him on the back of his head. "Knock it off. We're not hard up for cash, and you do _not_ get cheap on people you owe, that's a surefire way to make enemies in this business."

"And so is calling powerful parahumans freaks and mocking their amnesia," Lisa chipped in. "Besides, he's new. If we do a good turn for him in his hour of need, when he has no resources or connections, he'll probably be more friendly to us in the future."

"I guess karma even works with supervillains," Bug muttered to herself.

Lisa turned and gave a beaming smile to Bug, as if the comment had been directed at her. "It's good that you picked up on that! They say there's no honor among thieves, but really, nothing could be further from the truth. When you don't follow the law, trust and reputation become a currency all their own, one that's even easier to lose than hard cash."

"What _is_ your reputation? Like, what exactly is it that you all _do?"_ Bug asked, a bit apprehensively.

Lisa smiled devilishly. Oh, she wanted to see the look on Bug's unmasked face when she learned exactly what Lisa's power was. "If you want the full scoop on our members, I'm afraid details only come with full membership."

After letting that sink in, Lisa softened her tone. "But what I _can_ tell you is that we're a good group. Our specialty is smash and grab robbery, we're not thugs for hire. Our track record is top notch, and we're in it for fun and profit. No grand agenda. No real responsibility."

For long seconds, Bug deliberated. Blessedly, Alec remained silent while she thought. Finally, Lisa could resist no longer, and let the walls of her power down.

_Attention diverted from lunchbox; Bug not tempted by money, not overly concerned by danger. Lack of follow-up questions on Undersiders' reputation, not motivated by status. Seeks companionship. Wants friends who understand her parahuman nature. Wants to fight 'real' criminals. Wants freedom from authority. Afraid of betrayal. Just remembered an obstacle to joining._

Lisa stopped there. She frowned, even as Bug silently continued thinking. There were myriad reasons Bug was weighing to join the Undersiders; but the important part was that she was thinking about the potential downsides. People who were talking themselves into doing something tended to only tally the advantages.

"I need some more time to think about it," Bug finally said, slowly and carefully. "I'm really new to all this. Can I sleep on it?"

"Sure," Brian said easily, before Lisa could open her mouth to respond. He walked over to Bug and held out one of his burner phones, which she took gingerly like it was a live grenade. "This phone hasn't been used, but it's got four numbers programmed in it. Call the first one when you've decided."

"If you don't call by tomorrow, we'll consider that a no," Lisa added.

"Okay. Thanks. I'll let you know." Bug said, pausing for an awkward moment before turning around and leaving.

Brian watched as she climbed down and left down the street. Once she was well beyond even enhanced earshot, he turned to Lisa. "Well? What's the verdict?"

"Going into this meeting, I'd have said there was a high probability she says yes," Lisa said, frowning slightly. "Now, though, she might still say yes, but there's a complication. She's going to try to get some stuff in order first. Make preparations. Not quite sure what. She thinks something is in the way, and her answer will depend on if she's able to take care of it."

Lisa looked back over the devastation in the street, and couldn't suppress a shiver of unease.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last! Arc 1 is over, and Taylor has officially departed from canon with this choice not to join the Undersiders immediately. Now the real changes are set to begin.
> 
> Thanks again to everyone who left a comment! I'd also like to address a question that was recently raised regarding Alex's apparent propensity for people-eating, which is due to several factors I took from Prototype canon.
> 
> First, although Blacklight does have a metabolism, and it can get sustenance from food, it is fundamentally still a virus, and therefore it is incapable of reproducing without infecting host cells. What Alex experiences as "hunger pangs" and a ravenous "appetite" are actually just his human brain's way of parsing a condition that is arguably more biologically akin to acute radiation sickness—cells dying off en masse without being able to replicate and replace themselves. That's why he heals himself and regains biomass from "consuming" live human cells, but only gains energy from food.
> 
> Second, Blacklight was engineered to be a biological weapon that targets individual people or racial groups. In that respect, it failed, as it cleared the very low bar of mutating to affect the entire human species. However, it hasn't had much time at all to evolve, so it still has a species barrier to infection. However, like many deadly viruses, it could jump the species barrier with enough mutation. Alex has amnesia, though, and still considers himself a parahuman, so he doesn't know that option is on the table yet.
> 
> Third, the scene at the end of canon where Alex reconstitutes himself partially with the aid of consuming a raven can easily be explained under this schema by either late-development Alex successfully jumping the species barrier, or the bird itself already being infected, as they were in Prototype 2. Regardless, for the purposes of this fic, Blacklight has an internally-consistent biology and method of operation, one that notably doesn't violate conservation of mass or conservation of energy like "normal" parahuman powers regularly do. The characters simply don't know Alex is operating by a different set of rules yet.
> 
> If anyone is interested in further reading on this and related Blacklight subjects, the biology involved has been chronicled on the informational thread for this story over at SpaceBattles. However, one should beware of spoilers, and that information is not necessary to enjoy the story—you can simply learn the necessary details as the characters themselves discover them.


	9. Infection 2.1

**Infection 2.1**

With every passing hour spent in the quiet library, Alex grew hungrier and more irritable. As it became harder and harder to focus on the critical research he was doing, he convinced himself that putting off his reading in lieu of imagining in vivid detail finding some criminals to consume was actually 'planning strategy' and not just counterproductive fantasizing brought on by his hunger.

In an effort to distract himself from the distraction, Alex ended up spending close to forty bucks at the library café on various high-calorie snacks throughout the rest of the day. It didn't really help, _per se,_ but the act of eating was cathartic, and the effect was kind of like taking a nap or drinking a strong cup of coffee—it made him feel more alert and less tired afterwards, at least for a short while.

Unfortunately, his brief reprieve didn't last. A young hispanic woman had walked into the café pushing a baby stroller. Alex hadn't paid either of them any mind, until they went past him and he'd gotten a whiff. The combined scent of both mother and child was so saccharine and overwhelming he'd gagged and would have vomited on his ham-and-cheese croissant, but he lacked the organs to do more than dry-heave. It was like getting splashed in the face with a bucket of the world's best perfume. Getting hit with it all at once was entirely too much of a good thing, and Alex really, _really_ didn't want to find out what the powerful, sweet aromas would do to his hunger once his nose acclimated to it. He had been forced to flee the café, his tendrils involuntarily twisting and coiling under his skin in ways he fervently hoped weren't outwardly visible.

After that, Alex returned to the musty reference section to quarantine himself from humanity in general, and begrudgingly returned to his reading. When the library finally closed at nine o'clock, he immediately headed north.

It was time to put his plan into action.

Lung's memories were really the best asset Alex could have asked for. Lung wasn't anyone's idea of an informed citizen, but he was surprisingly quite involved in micromanaging his little gang. Lung was of the unyielding belief that rule through fear was the most effective method, and nothing struck fear into his subordinates' hearts quite like the knowledge that Lung would show up completely at random to survey his domain, and make sure no one was slacking, stealing, or otherwise misbehaving.

It was a philosophy Alex could really get behind. It also meant he had intimate knowledge of Lung's holdings. He'd reviewed Lung's memories in exacting detail, marking the most crucial places to hit-and-run. Tonight, he was going to binge on Lung's enforcers, then steal the hundreds of thousands of dollars they had available in liquid assets. The illiquid assets—the drugs, businesses, protection rings, slaves, and so on—were worth tens of millions more, but for a single day's work, Alex thought his goal was more than sufficient.

Walking through the Bay at dusk with Lung's memories in tow was utterly bizarre. The city was simultaneously familiar yet entirely new—the closest analogue Alex could think of was the feeling of seeing a really good movie adaptation of a book, one that brought imagination to life. The comparison actually worked very well, because like a movie, what he was seeing and hearing was vastly more detailed than mere memories, but like a book, the memories had the advantage of a whole freight of emotion and context, an immense web of connections that were tied inextricably with Lung's life and perspective.

The sensation was so engrossing, Alex could almost ignore his aching hunger as he got closer and closer to Lung's home.

The ABB's territory was sprawling and nebulous, but generally concentrated to the north-northeast of Brockton Bay. The Docks, as this area was locally known, actually existed mostly inland, with the Boardwalk and Downtown mostly crowding the waterfront to the east and south, respectively. Alex was headed away from these more upscale boroughs, and the change was both sudden and drastic.

Alex knew—though he couldn't remember where he'd learned it—that Baltimore was famous for having multimillion dollar mansions separated from redlined low-rise ghettos by a few minutes' walking distance. Brockton Bay was even worse.

Much like the movie set of an old western film, where all the buildings were just flat wooden props, the nice part of town only had one or two 'buffer blocks' that hid away the impoverished part of town. At a distance, the Docks appeared mostly industrial, with some interspersed housing developments. Up close, however, the decay was inescapable. The boxy, mostly brick buildings and crumbling roads looked like they hadn't seen a gardener, plumber, or paver in decades, and only the copious colorful graffiti broke up their dull grays and browns. Windows were broken, blocked, or boarded up, with graffiti as an optional extra. There was a weird lopsidedness to the population density; tenement buildings with electricity and water were packed to the gills with poor families sharing small apartments, while buildings that lacked utilities were more sparsely populated with squatters, and former industrial sites and businesses were utterly deserted.

Alex couldn't even imagine a more perfect place for him to hunt.

Everyone Alex could see in this area looked either poor, trashy, or afraid. There was little obvious demarcation between the homeless and people who had a place to stay, except that the homeless tended to cling to the backpacks, shopping carts, and strollers filled with their earthly possessions. There was a whole spectrum of drug addiction and obvious mental instability, and the only people who weren't scurrying to their destinations while studiously avoiding eye contact or lurking around like vultures were prostitutes and the delusional.

Despite how normal all of this seemed to Lung's memories, Alex was honestly surprised to see just how terrible the state of things was, even given that it was night. Having lived in Manhattan previously, even if he couldn't remember it, must have influenced his attitude. Alex dismissed it from his mind and headed further east, angling along Chatham street, into the heart of ABB territory.

The pan-Asian ghetto in Brockton Bay had started out as a small, relatively normal Chinatown in the cheap real estate a few blocks inland from the Boardwalk. The area had been swelled by refugees, mostly from Japan, following the sinking of Kyushu by Leviathan.

Alex shivered slightly at the memory. It was still surreal to him that Lung had been _there,_ fighting against Leviathan by himself, although it couldn't even be called a stalemate. Lung had done no permanent damage to the creature, and while they were battling, the island of Kyushu had been shattered and swallowed up by the sea, killing millions. The entire Pacific rim had been ravaged by earthquakes and tsunamis, the likes of which had not scoured the earth since the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Thousands of Americans had died in Hawaii and on the west coast, but the United States had gotten off relatively light. Eastern countries closer to the epicenter of the disaster weren't so lucky.

As a result, Brockton Bay had also seen a notable influx of immigrants from Vietnam and Korea. A combination of poverty and white supremacist hostility had forced all the pan-asian refugees to settle in the Chinatown, regardless of their national origin or language. The CUI, of course, kept a lid on their emigration, so the only Chinese here were long-established immigrants and their descendants, who largely hated the new refugees—

—Alex did a mental double-take. Wait, the _what?_ Since when was China called the CUI? Lung actually knew that one; it had happened in 1991. Lung had many, many memories of those creepy Yàngbǎn motherfuckers, but Alex could have sworn the country was called the People's Republic of China, not the Chinese Union-Imperial, and that didn't just feel like one of those finicky Burma/Myanmar or Britain/United Kingdom distinctions, either. It wasn't a translation issue, either, since Lung knew the distinction in English as well as Mandarin.

Alex shook his head to clear his thoughts. It was another bizarre inconsistency to add to the growing list, but for now, he'd take Lung's memories as the correct version, considering they had an actual basis in memory and not some vague, strangely outdated feeling behind them.

Regardless, Brockton Bay's native Chinese and all the rest had turned the miniature Chinatown into a ticking time bomb of factionalism and bigotry, with no less than six major spoken languages and various ethnic gangs crammed into just a few streets. The Azn Bad Boys had been a bit player in the brewing conflict, an embarrassingly-named gang composed of the few solely English-speaking and mixed-race Asians who didn't fit in with the national groups.

Then Lung had arrived.

With a new leader of unchallenged might and a convenient common racial enemy in the Empire, who vastly outnumbered them in terms of capes, the conflict between the various Asian ethnic groups basically evaporated overnight. The hostility and bigotry remained, but no one dared to invite Lung's wrath by acting on it.

Over the course of the next decade, Lung remade the ghetto according to his own desires. Lung was fundamentally running an economy of vice and sin within his territory—and, in his own way, he had actually been satisfied with the changes he had wrought. The red-light district was his own garish, neon palace. It had transformed from a pathetic ghetto into a glamorous, yet wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Alex could see his destination coming into view now. It was the remains of the original Chinatown, now the ABB's capitol and seat of power in the Docks. There was no real border, no one street dedicated to it, nor even an architectural change. It consisted of the same boxy, gray brick buildings as the rest of the Docks, but this one corridor was decorated with dense shops advertised by neon signs and colorful awnings covered in written Chinese that Alex was amazed to find he was actually able to read at a glance. The red-and-purple sign he was looking at, for instance, said 'fine liquor and tobacco' in Traditional Chinese characters.

Apparently, Lung's skills transferred over to him more seamlessly than his memories did. It aided enormously in telling which businesses were legitimate and which were black markets, casinos, and bordellos, and Alex was amused at how blatant they were in spelling out exactly that. The people here had absolute confidence that the civil authorities wouldn't be able to read the signs as well. Knowing how white the local police force was, the signs were probably more secure than the Enigma Code.

Something was very different today, though. This street was normally raucous and crowded, especially at night in this part of town, but now they were half-deserted. Most of the businesses were closed, including all of Lung's properties that Alex could see. The few people who were out and about looked wary, suspicious, and afraid.

If anything, Alex had expected the Docks to be like an overturned anthill of ABB activity, but there wasn't a single enforcer in sight, nor any initiates wearing the ABB's red and green, not even here in their inner sanctum. Lung would have been outraged, and Alex could feel more than a little secondhand irritation, albeit for another reason—he wanted to eat _now,_ goddamnit. Alex paced up and down the street, his incredulity and anger mounting, but there was not a single gang member to be found, not even in plainclothes, and the overwhelming majority of the closed, uninhabited shops were the ones that had belonged to the ABB. There was no way that was a coincidence.

If they were all hiding out at home, Alex would just have to come to them. He knew just where to start.

Hoàng Kim Linh was one of Lung's former prostitutes, one who had demonstrated enough ruthlessness and intelligence to work her way up to being a madam and full member of the ABB, one of the very few female ones. Incidentally, she also fucked Lung frequently enough that he knew the location of her apartment key by heart. Alex diverted from the main street to go around to the back of Linh's brothel, which advertised itself as a massage parlor draped in excessive amounts of scarlet and gold. He retrieved the key from a false brick that was almost out of reach, and let himself in.

As Alex expected, the business on the first floor was entirely dark and empty. He felt for the handrails on the wall and went upstairs, where there were at least lights in the halls. This was where the apartments were, and where the prostitutes actually slept when they weren't working.

The lights were on in the halls, but there were no sounds or music coming from the apartments. It was eerily silent, save for Alex's footsteps. He was already almost certain the building was completely empty, even before he got to Linh's door, but he opened it anyway.

The familiar, plushly-decorated apartment was abandoned and dark.

Alex closed the door, and after a moment's thought, wiped down the knob with his sleeve to erase any fingerprints.

This was rapidly becoming concerning. Alex's eagerness and hunger were giving way to suspicion and paranoia.

The ABB's core members consisted of only fifty-six enforcers, now fifty as of yesterday's arrests. That made it by far the smallest of the parahuman-led gangs in Brockton Bay. Even so, for them to all vanish into thin air represented coordination on an absolutely _absurd_ scale. The ABB's total absence in the Docks implied hundreds of ABB affiliates closing up shop and going underground in a single day. Prostitutes, pimps, dealers, contractors, enforcers, runners, slaves, even the people involved in the surprisingly mundane logistical and money-laundering side of things. All gone.

It was obvious that something sinister was going on, and equally obvious who was behind it. The police would have made a scene, and likewise the Empire Eighty-Eight would have proudly displayed their bloody conquest in the streets. This had to have come from within the ABB itself. A coup.

That lunatic Bakuda must have been just _waiting_ to take the reins, and probably had most of this coup planned out well in advance. But even then, it was baffling that she'd actually managed to pull it off so thoroughly, and without even a trace of dissent.

Fucking hell. He'd come all this way and found nothing. Alex's plan to start picking off gang members one by one was off to a roaring start.

No. This was ridiculous. Alex refused to believe that Bakuda's takeover was that perfect. Not after only a fucking _day_. There had to be a trace of the ABB somewhere in the area, he just needed to broaden his scope a little and do some actual detective work.

If the crown jewel of Lung's kingdom was depopulated, then that could only mean the gang's forces were massing elsewhere, likely at the abandoned foundry that the ABB used for gun running, or the old warehouse they used for processing and shipping drugs. The latter held one of Lung's usual lairs, for when he wasn't shacking up in one of the brothels, as well as a major portion of his cash reserves held in the overseer's office safe.

Alex first cased one street and then another in a zigzagging path through the Docks, approximating a search pattern as he made his way towards the drug warehouse on Sunset and Whitmore. After only a few blocks of this, he was getting impatient with the slow progress towards his ultimate destination, but he finally spotted something of a lead parked incongruously in front of a tiny, decrepit gymnasium-slash-martial arts dojo.

It was a surprisingly clean but objectively hideous Volkswagen Vanagon, with a brown body and a beige roof. Plaid brown curtains were drawn across most of the windows, and the angled tent-roof was popped up. The tall, brick-shaped van was perched precariously high on top of its closely-spaced wheels, making the whole thing look like it was about to tip over even when it wasn't moving.

The preposterous car twigged something in Lung's memories. It was the home and traveling base of operations of Yoshida Tsuneyuki, one of the ABB's subordinate drug dealers, primarily focused on marijuana and psychedelics if Alex remembered correctly.

Small fry it may be, but Alex felt vindicated nonetheless. It hadn't been a perfect evacuation after all.

He walked up to the parked van and pounded on the sliding door. He heard a faint scraping sound inside, then the curtain drew back and a black semiautomatic handgun appeared, pointing at his head from behind the glass.

Alex stared down the barrel, genuinely frozen with shock. After a moment, he calmed down, realizing that being shot by a handgun would hurt like hell, but it probably couldn't harm him in any way that Lung hadn't done already, so feeling threatened by a gun was irrational.

There was no way that Alex would give Yoshida the satisfaction of making demands. He stood his ground, glaring.

After a few seconds, the curtain slid back all the way, revealing Yoshida's face, frowning in confused consternation at the intruder. He couldn't have looked more at odds with his van, being a lanky, tan, college-aged Japanese guy wearing what looked like a designer hat with a flat red brim and a lime green streak dyed in his messy black hair.

Yoshida barked orders at Alex, calling him a Nazi bastard and telling him to go away in an obnoxious Osakan accent, then made a nearly comical shooing gesture with his gun when Alex didn't budge.

Scowling at the drug dealer, Alex denied he was a Nazi, then angrily asked Yoshida if he points a gun at everyone who knocks on his door.

To Alex's surprise, Yoshida actually lowered the gun, and regarded him with frank astonishment.

Belatedly, Alex played back the last few seconds in his head and realized that Yoshida hadn't only had an accent, he'd actually been _speaking Japanese_.

What's more, Alex had replied _in the same language._

A cold prickle of dread ran down his spine. That was honestly alarming. It had _felt_ like the words he was hearing and speaking were English, or just as naturally comprehensible as English, but in hindsight, he had undeniably slipped into a native tongue that wasn't even his own. He didn't think it was normal for someone to not realize what language they were conversing in, no matter how fluent they were. It raised the uncomfortable question of whether Alex's personality really escaped his encounter with Lung unscathed.

"You, uh... what do you want?" Yoshida asked, this time in English, his face a portrait of confused suspicion. Ironically, Yoshida's Osakan accent was far more noticeable in Japanese than it was when he was speaking English. His English was accented too, but the faint traces of Japanese pronunciation were largely hidden under a staccato New York accent.

Alex momentarily blanked on the answer he wanted to give. The honest answer was that he wanted to consume Yoshida and pick through his memories, but now he was concerned about the unknown toll it might take on his psyche. Was having other people's memories in his head better or worse than outright schizophrenia? Maybe it would be better to just start cutting people's heads off before consuming them, but then he wouldn't be able to get the information he wanted.

 _Then again, it's not like I have anything to lose by just asking him for the information. If he talks, I'll try pulping his head to see if that makes a difference, and if he doesn't, I'll just consume him like normal,_ Alex decided.

After a brief pause, carefully replied in English, "I want to know what the hell's going on with the ABB."

"What is this, an interview? You a journalist or something?" Yoshida said skeptically.

Alex tilted his head. "Do I _look_ like a reporter?"

Yoshida gave Alex a shrewd look, then sighed melodramatically. "First the fuckin' _Pod People_ attack, now a crazy Japanese-speakin' creeper comes knockin' on my door. It just gets weirder and weirder around here."

"Pod people? And you're calling _me_ crazy. Have you been sampling your own supply?" said Alex, bristling at the insult.

"I _wish,"_ Yoshida muttered.

"Look, are you going to—" Alex cut his sentence short when Yoshida slid open the door to his van, then gestured for him to come inside.

Alex was surprised and a bit suspicious at the sudden good fortune. The van was not an ideal place to consume anyone. Sure, the windows were all covered by curtains, giving him the perfect cover to consume Yoshida, but this was still way too public for his liking. He glanced up and down the street, looking for any security cameras.

 _"Oi,_ you waitin' on me to roll out the red carpet? Get in!" Yoshida said from inside.

Frowning, Alex clambered into the van, making the suspension creak ominously. Yoshida shut the door behind him.

The inside of the van was laid out like a small living room, with a little kitchenette thing off to the side opposite the sliding door, but that wasn't the first thing that came to notice. The space had been festooned with a riot of bright, clashing colors and patterns in a variety of regional styles, and, ironically, there _was_ in fact a red carpet rolled out over the floor, albeit a paisley-patterned one. Blankets and pillows had been draped haphazardly over the brown plaid seats, ranging from tie-dye to something Aztec-looking. As if that hadn't been enough colors, Yoshida had hung a strand of those multicolored Christmas lights up around the roof, which provided a majority of the illumination. It smelled faintly of weed, but mostly like instant ramen and Yoshida's cheap spray-on cologne, which was putting Alex off his appetite somewhat.

It was surprisingly roomy inside the garish van, but it looked like Yoshida had been in the middle of packing away his colorful glass bongs and pot candies into the cabinets. They stood in a neat row on one of the little foldaway tables. Yoshida himself was lounging on the bench seat facing the front, and Alex took the swiveling passenger seat facing the back. Yoshida was still holding the gun, his finger on the trigger, but he wasn't pointing it at Alex.

"So, who the hell're you supposed to be?" asked Yoshida.

"I'm... a private investigator," Alex lied, and he sounded unconvincing even to himself. The weirdness of the situation was putting him off his game, not that the current stakes were particularly high.

Yoshida snorted derisively. _"Sure_ you are. You're just lucky I'm not really ABB, or you might've been shot. Speakin' of luck, in case you didn't know, I'm 'Lucky' Yoshida, the prem—"

"—Real name _Tsuneyuki_ Yoshida, the stoner who lives in his van and sells drugged candy and shrooms. Yes, I know who you are." Alex interrupted.

Yoshida pressed his gun hand against his heart melodramatically, in violation of all good sense and gun safety. "You make it sound so _sketchy_. I only sell the _primo_ goods, y'hear? Best CBD and THC edibles in the Bay. You gotta try some of this stuff, it'll rock your socks for the rest of the night, or your money back! Or, if you're more of a get-high-on-your-lunch-break kinda guy, I've got—"

"—Not interested. Do you really think I'd believe you're not with the ABB?" Alex interrupted, fixing him with a hard stare.

"Believe what you want, doesn't change what's true. I'm more of a... what's the word, not subcontractor, but... oh yeah, a _franchisee_. I just wear the colors and pay the tax, so they let me sell my stuff here. They don't give me too much grief. Normally." said Yoshida, shrugging noncommittally. "But lemme tell you, I didn't sign up for whatever crazy shit is goin' down here. Not half an hour ago, two high schoolers and a fuckin' _mailman_ tried to grab me off the street! It's like the _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ out there! I thought, fuck it, it's not _my_ goddamn job to help the enforcers sort out whatever the fuck's goin' on. That's why I'm packin' up my merch and gettin' the hell outta Dodge."

Alex mulled that information over for a bit. These kidnappers sounded a lot like forced conscripts, not actual ABB members. It wasn't unusual for the ABB to force people to join when their numbers got too low, and after Lung's disappearance, they'd be desperate. "I guess that explains you greeting me with the gun," Alex said dryly.

Yoshida gave Alex a dorky grin and pointed the gun up at the ceiling. He pulled the trigger, and with a faint click, a little flame came out of the barrel.

"You threatened me with a _novelty lighter?"_ Alex said incredulously.

Yoshida ineptly twirled the lighter on his finger like he was trying to imitate an Old West gunslinger. "Bluffed the wannabe kidnappers, too."

"What if you'd had to shoot me? Or _them?"_ Alex asked, almost offended.

"Didn't have to." Yoshida said with an artful shrug and a sunny smile.

Alex was astounded at the sheer irony and stupidity of that attitude. He just couldn't let that slide, not when Yoshida had unwittingly invited his own soon-to-be murderer inside for a private chat. "I could have a gun. I could have lied about not being a Nazi. I could be out to rob you blind, or _worse_. How the _hell_ is it a good idea to show me your gun is fake?"

The drug dealer gave Alex a strange look. "Wow, man, you're all rainbows and sunshine, aren't you? Okay, first off, if you had a gun and wanted to rob me, you'd've tried it before now, instead of grillin' me about the ABB. Second, I'll believe a neo-Nazi speaks Japanese when pigs fly. Third, you look like you haven't slept in a week, but you're obviously not one of those dirty Merchant scumbags, since you've got all your teeth and you're clearly way too sober. Besides all that, it'd be a dick move for me to make a mistake, and then keep you thinkin' I might shoot you. It offends my sensibilities as an upstandin' member of the community."

At Alex's skeptical look, Yoshida continued, speaking slowly as if he were explaining something to a small child. "Like... it's okay to be careful and all, but you can't just be an asshole to _everyone_ you meet. Hurts business. Sometimes it pays to be nice, y'know?"

Alex scoffed. _"Nice?_ In this decrepit fucking place? Whatever. It's your funeral. Do you know what's up with these kidnappers or not?"

Yoshida contemplatively scratched at his short chin stubble. "I'm not really sure I should tell you. What're you even gonna do with that? Try to storm the fuckin' bastille and take down this new slave ring or whatever the fuck it is? Gimme a break."

"Give you a break? Good idea. I'll _break your fucking jaw_ if you don't tell me in the next _three seconds."_ said Alex, giving Yoshida a frigid death glare.

Yoshida lifted his hands in mock surrender. "Fine, fine, far be it from me to stop you from stickin' your dick in the hornet's nest. The snatchers asked if I'd already been to Bakuda, and when I said no, that's when they tried to grab me. Call me Captain Obvious, but I, uh, think the two were related."

Thinking back, Alex remembered Bakuda's primary workspace at the abandoned boathouse. She'd been obsessive about setting up labs and boltholes and safehouses everywhere in ABB territory when she'd first arrived, and there were so many abandoned buildings to choose from that Lung hadn't really cared about stopping her. There were several places she and the others might be.

That these apparent conscripts were so insistent on sending people to Bakuda didn't make much sense on the face of it. Her labs weren't in strategic or important locations, pretty much the opposite.

Yoshida reached over to a box sitting on the mini-kitchen's counter and pulled out a green homemade lollipop with a marijuana leaf pattern and stuck it in his mouth. "So anyway," he said around his mouthful, "Was there somethin' else you wanted?"

Alex refocused on Yoshida, then shook his head in amazement. He was suddenly reminded that his original purpose for coming here was to eat Yoshida, but he'd been so lost in thought he'd actually forgotten that for more than a minute, which was saying something. For someone who went by the nickname 'Lucky,' the guy seemed ironically determined to get himself eaten. It was honestly kind of funny. Alex idly wondered if Lucky would be stupid enough to follow him to somewhere more private if he paid him two hundred bucks first.

Well, it probably wasn't a good idea to eat Lucky just yet, not until Alex secured a steady source of plausibly deniable food. He was hungry, but he wasn't really starving or on the verge of losing control yet, and he might need emergency rations later. If nothing else, the van was easy to find. That was an amusing image, Lucky's van serving as Alex's very own take-out _bentō._

Alex's train of thought derailed at that. There it was _again,_ Lung's influence at work. The first thing that had come to Alex's mind was a Japanese _bentō_ , not an American lunchbox. It was disquieting.

In fact, these personality influences were probably Alex's most important problem—if not the one with the highest priority. It was the question of how much other people's personalities and memories would contaminate or dilute Alex's own personality. If his mental Ship of Theseus problem was truly as serious as he feared, he needed to carefully track the trends of his own thoughts, keeping an eye out for any shifts or discrepancies.

That had its own dangers and risks, however. It was all too easy to self-diagnose every little mood change into a fundamental personality shift, and become some kind of mental hypochondriac. The truly horrifying thing was that it was _absolutely_ plausible that his power would have major negative side-effects. That sort of thing happened _all the time_ with parahumans, particularly Case 53s like him.

"As fun as it is to watch you starin' off into space and makin' all kinds of weird expressions, I was politely trying to suggest you either buy something or move on, buddy." Lucky said, interrupting Alex's ruminations.

"Yeah. I'm done here," Alex said gruffly, leaning over to open the van's door and let himself out.

"Hey, wait—before you go, do you wanna explain how you even know all of this? Or why you learned to speak Japanese?" asked Lucky.

"Nope," Alex replied, stepping out of the van and leaving Lucky behind to sputter indignantly.

Alex made his way towards Bakuda's main lab, finding nothing else of note in the Docks along the way, and reached it within a few minutes. It was located in clear view of the most decayed part of town—the so-called 'Boat Graveyard,' located on the northern lip of the Bay. It was the first part of the city to collapse due to the loss of shipping, and since there were no homes or apartments around, the only people who came here anymore tended to be criminals looking to stash contraband and the rare new parahuman looking to test out their powers.

They were welcome to it, as far as Alex was concerned. Fuck the water.

There was a cracked parking lot overflowing with weeds before pier C, which was the one dealing mainly with small fishing vessels and pleasure craft like sailboats and kayaks. Hence, the boathouse—a tall boxy building at the edge of the water that was basically a parking garage for small boats, which were stacked neatly on giant shelves inside. It was easy to see why such a setup had been necessary—the other mostly abandoned boats in the marina were covered with algae, lichens, rust, and truly prodigious amounts of seagull shit.

It really did look like scenes from the post-apocalypse here. If it weren't for the downtown skyscrapers that were all lit up, Alex could easily have convinced himself he was the last person alive in the city, touring the New England equivalent of Pripyat. However, he still kept his hood lowered to obscure his identity from any watching eyes, and stuck to the shadows. Just because he seemed alone didn't mean he was, after all. Stealth was key, here.

Alex got within thirty feet of the boathouse's door, and still there was nothing. No people, no sounds from inside, no glow of light from the few grimy, opaque windows.

The thought occurred to him, then, that Lucky might have made up the whole thing and sent him on a wild goose chase. The very idea filled Alex with white-hot fury, some of it self-directed for not thinking of that sooner. Regardless, he'd already suspected Bakuda, so tracking her down was still his best shot at finding the ABB. He took another step towards the building, intending to creep up beside a window and peek in for any signs or clues, and—

There was no warning.

A flash of blue light and a deafening _bang_ was the last thing Alex knew before he suddenly didn't have a top half. His mind came apart into countless pieces, but they were somehow still conscious and aware as the heat and pain hit a moment later. Their legs and lower torso hit the ground, spilling their organs out onto the pavement. They were burning—everything was heat and darkness and _pain_.

They writhed, unable to scream, unable to balance or move to escape the flames without arms, without a chest, without a _head_. It was all so wrong. They frantically pushed their thinning mass into the proper shape, reforming their body even as they were ravaged by flames.

As soon as he was capable of movement, Alex lunged away blindly, flying through the air and careening into a hard surface that wasn't the ground. The impact spun him, and he fell.

He still couldn't see, but he could feel the fire clinging to his waist and legs, he could feel himself charring, he could feel his fluids _boiling_ under his skin. He rolled along the damp, grimy pavement, but the fires burned and persisted even without air. His throat and lungs finally reformed, and he screamed, raw and wild, but was only able to hear it a few seconds later.

Alex's eyes reformed, and he could see the blue flames clinging to him in sticky blue blotches. His mind was consumed by unbearable, searing agony, mixed with the deep, primal panic of being crippled, being _mutilated_.

He needed to tear it off, _tear the fire away_ somehow—

Acting on no plan and just pure, desperate instinct, Alex's right hand became like Lung's had been when he'd died, with metallic claws extending from each digit like short swords. Alex _hacked_ at the pieces of himself, slashing strips from his hide like it was paper and flinging it away, even as the blue fire then clung to his new claws. It didn't just spread, it _multiplied_ on whatever surface it touched, making extricating the flames even more costly. He moved his flesh, shunted and concentrated the burning parts of himself together, and began to cut the flames away more efficiently, more quickly than it could spread.

As soon as his clawed hand was the only thing left that was burning, Alex plunged it into the pavement, meeting no more resistance than if he had been punching through a soggy cracker. He held his hand under the shattered, saturated ground, but still it burned. He extricated the burning limb and formed his left hand into claws, and without an instant of hesitation, lopped off the charred, ruined hand off at the wrist in one final burst of agony.

Alex stopped screaming, gasping raggedly. He pulled himself up into a slouched, kneeling position, his arms wrapped tightly around his chest. He watched as his severed body parts melted into stringy, octopus-like shapes that flailed in agony as they burned a pale, baleful blue. Alex blinked several times to clear his fuzzy vision. He was dizzy, and now he felt truly starved again. He'd had to sacrifice so much of what he'd gotten from Lung—probably over half of his total mass, obliterated or torn away by his own hands.

 _Hands_. Alex looked on in numb shock at what had become of his hands. His left hand had reformed without any real conscious input from him, mirroring his right, which had regrown. His arms had become charcoal black with veins of crimson running through them like ore. His hands were bigger and thicker now, smoothly emerging from his spiny forearms along with the black and red coloration. His hands also had subtly inhuman proportions, like they were partway between a human hand and an animal paw. Ten gleaming black-and-silver blades tipped his fingers, each a foot long. The shape was like Lung's claws, but the color and composition of Alex's claws was different, as if he'd made a hasty cast from Lung's mold using his own thorny tendrils. At a thought, Alex was able to lengthen the claws to the size of sabers, and shorten them to six inches, all by deconstructing them and reconstructing them in the space of about a second.

 _Useful,_ Alex thought. He didn't have the wherewithal to experiment beyond that right now, but this might just be the beginning of his ability to reshape himself on the fly.

Alex returned his hands to normal, and it was like they'd never been any different. He put one foot under him, then the other, and lurched to an upright position, feeling the critically damaged parts of his innards sloshing around.

To his left, fires raged. What little remained of the boathouse was engulfed in a mix of normal yellow-orange flames and the pale blue ones that were also splattered all over the pavement in puddles. He suspected that the blue fires would be burning long, long after the normal ones faded. The front of the building had been completely blasted away, probably in the initial ignition, and the thin cladding had flaked off the sturdier girders of the opposite end. Inside, there were the shapes of empty racks and a few pulverized boats, maybe even the remains of a lab, but there were no people or body parts around.

Shock gradually ebbed away, leaving behind a mounting sense of fury. Either Bakuda had left for the day, or she'd rotated out to one of her other lairs. Maybe Lucky had tipped Bakuda off. Alex _knew_ he should have eaten Lucky while he'd had the chance. All he wanted now was to find those two so he could tear them to _bloody pieces_ and gorge himself on their _still-living bodies_ —

Shaking his head, Alex forced himself to focus. Even with nobody around, he was not out of danger. Wary of additional traps, he ran. Not even the incredible speeds and liberating heights he reached were able to affect him in the dark place he had gone.

All he knew at this point was that he was starving, and he fucking _hated_ fire and every last cape that used it. _Twice_ in less than twenty-four hours, he'd nearly been immolated. Enough was enough.

Alex thought he'd been careful enough after scoping out the surrounding area, but he hadn't even seen the slightest trace of the bomb that got him, or how it was triggered. At least he'd confirmed that he was capable of thinking without actually having a brain. But whatever the fuck Alex was thinking with, he clearly wasn't doing _enough_ of it.

Yes, in hindsight sniffing around the mad bomb Tinker's stomping grounds had not been a brilliant idea. If he'd been anything remotely like a 'normal' parahuman, he'd be _extremely_ dead right now, courtesy of Bakuda's anoxic blue napalm-stuff. Very few powers allowed survival of headshots. His powers might have saved his life again this time, but at the rate he was putting his fool ass in jeopardy, it wouldn't be a _week_ before he ran afoul of something that put him down for good. He really couldn't afford to make any more stupid mistakes like that, if for no other reason than he'd die of _humiliation_ if he ever did something so stupid again.

 _Why?_ Why had Alex been so reckless? Was his mind truly compromised, like he suspected? Did it even matter, when the fix of consuming people to regenerate might also end up diluting his own personality and compromising his mind even more?

Whatever the case, losing to _Bakuda_ of all people was infuriating on a level that was impossible to express with anything less than murder. At least Alex's newfound shame, rage, pain, and paranoia might serve a useful purpose as a motivator.

People were going to die. _Tonight_.

As tempting as revenge on Bakuda was, though, his top priority right now was to find someone— _anyone_ —he could eat. Alex was at least as starved as he'd been while he was in the middle of fighting Lung. His attention was constantly being dragged back to how hungry he was, and the full-body ache of it was even more acute. He was even starting to notice tremors every now and then, involuntary shivers and movement just underneath his skin that wasn't the result of any muscle twitch.

He should go find Lucky. It would be so _easy_ to get him to let Alex back in. He angled west, running from rooftop to rooftop in the Docks as fast as he was able.

Alex nearly screamed in frustration when he found that Lucky's van wasn't where it had been before. Two minutes of fruitless searching later, and he decided he couldn't hold out any longer.

Fuck it, caution could wait. This city was full of gangsters and criminals, Alex didn't strictly _need_ to restrict his search to some premeditated list of ABB victims that he knew for certain the authorities wouldn't notice were gone. The only real criterion that mattered was that the police wouldn't get too suspicious about the victim meeting a messy, violent end, and wouldn't give a shit about them anyway.

That gave Alex an idea. He changed course south and started heading towards nearby Empire territory. He may not have any memories of the Empire's specific members, but he _did_ know that the Nazis were kind enough to tattoo convenient labels on themselves.

Alex bared his teeth in a horrible parody of a smile. First he'd feast on some Empire thugs, then there'd be nothing to stop him from finding Bakuda and making her _pay._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Long chapter is long. I was tempted to split it, but this is a nice place to finish off the first chapter of the arc, I think. Alex just wouldn't be Alex without a revenge plot, after all. For the next chapter, I am issuing a content warning for the following things: fascist and racist rhetoric and extreme graphic violence. You have been warned. Alex is a protagonist in this story but he's in a very bad place right now and about to do some extremely, objectively bad things. There will be consequences for that, and he won't necessarily always act in such a monstrous way, but if that doesn't sound like something you'd be comfortable reading, best to turn back now.


	10. Infection 2.M

**Infection 2.M**

Marcus lounged in the Eagle's Nest, slowly sinking into one of the bar's comfortable leather couches. He was nursing his second tall glass of beer that night, mindful not to let the pleasant buzz muddle his thoughts. He wanted his mind to stay relatively sharp, but also keep the atmosphere relaxed. Marcus was admittedly a lightweight, in more ways than one, and it didn't take much alcohol to get a good buzz going—unlike his best friend Spencer, who sat in a matching armchair to his left.

Spencer charitably described himself as 'husky,' in stark contrast to Marcus, and as a result Spencer could pound away drinks all night long and barely show it. He was currently demolishing a fourth beer. That was fine, since he wasn't here to do the talking anyway. Spencer was around more to provide Marcus moral support and, admittedly, to complement him with a more normal and less serious side of things. It had been Spencer's idea to invite the third member of their little group.

On Marcus's right sat Seth, the younger brother of an old high school friend of Spencer's. Seth might have been okay with drinking alongside Spencer and Marcus—at least partly because he couldn't get easy access to booze anywhere else—but he wasn't a member of the Empire Eighty-Eight like Spencer and Marcus were. Marcus hoped to change that tonight. He had been noticed for his budding talent at changing minds, having brought two other members into the Empire in just six months, and adding a third would help him move up in the organization.

Marcus tended to prefer the deep and serious approach to recruitment, but Spencer was good at just making friends. He often reminded Marcus of a dog, in both good and bad ways. Spencer was friendly, silly, and a bit too fond of food, but he was brave and loyal when it counted the most. Marcus couldn't have asked for a better friend, or a better partner in crime to try winning over hearts and minds. Spencer could handle the heart, while Marcus would target the mind.

Seth had started out nervous when he'd entered the bar, but with the help of Spencer's happy-go-lucky teasing and antics, he'd mellowed out considerably. That was good—it would make the next part easier.

"What's with the dopey smile?" Spencer asked Marcus.

"Just thinkin' about days gone by. You know. High school. How glad I am to put that shit behind me," said Marcus, smirking at Seth before taking another sip of beer.

"Yeah, man. Ancient history," Seth responded with heavy irony, conveniently ignoring that he was 17 and still a senior at Winslow High.

Spencer snorted. "Oh, fuck off with your _ancient history_. If it weren't for us vouching for you, Liza would have tossed you out on your ass for showing up with that two-bit fake I.D."

Seth gestured at Marcus. "He's only one grade ahead of me, why aren't you getting on _his_ case?"

"It's not about drinking age, it's about who you _know_. Marcus and I are members of the club. You're just our guest," Spencer said sagely.

"Come on, Spence," Marcus gently chided. "He's just here to relax and have a good time. This isn't a members-only bar."

Spencer scoffed. "Like hell it isn't! Look around, do you see _anyone_ who's not white?"

"It's more than just that. If all they did was keep out Merchants and homeless trash, that would be kind of a low bar," Marcus pointed out.

"Pun intended, right? You get weird when you drink, I ever tell you that? All serious and philly- _philosophical_. It's fuckin'... nerdy as shit." Spencer said, stumbling a bit over his words.

"Whereas _you_ get all tongue-tied," Marcus deadpanned.

"I'll have you know I'm fluent in sign language too, jackass." said Spencer, flipping Marcus the bird and then launching into an elaborate pantomime with a lot of pointing and unintelligible arm-chopping motions.

"The hell are you even doing?" Seth laughed.

"Lettin' Marcus know he's a sad little stick-in-the-mud." said Spencer, stopping his wild gestures.

Marcus shrugged. Spencer's teasing had long since stopped making him feel offended, not when he knew Spencer wasn't really serious and tried to insult just about everyone he thought he could get away with.

"Come on, you fuckin' _lump_. Don't you at least wanna play pool or something?" Spencer wheedled. He could be surprisingly shrewish for a guy with a beer belly and deep baritone voice.

Marcus rolled his eyes. "Even _sober_ you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, much less a billiard ball. Maybe try your luck with Landon over there, he looks like he can barely stand. If you can beat him, get back to me."

Spencer stood up and walked off, muttering. "I dunno why I hang around with such a stuck-up little toothpick."

Chuckling at his friend, Marcus settled back, relaxing. He let the sounds of the room wash over him, the charging beat of the rock music playing at medium volume in the background, the murmur of the crowd, the clink of glasses and silverware. He loved relaxing at the Eagle's Nest. It was a safe haven full of simple pleasures, a stress-free environment compared to the howling goddamn insanity that was Brockton Bay.

Seth, however, was fidgeting and seemed quite restless. His fear at being busted for underage drinking had evaporated, but he still looked like he didn't quite know what to do with himself in this place where he stuck out like a sore thumb. He was the only one in the whole bar with shoulder-length brown hair, everyone else was either a natural or dyed blonde like Marcus, or a skinhead like Spencer.

Marcus waited patiently. The topic of the Empire's ideology was going to come up eventually. People didn't listen when you tried to shove your worldview down their throats, they just got defensive and shut down, he knew that much from bitter experience with his mom and sister. If you just left the door open and answered their questions, though, they'd be a lot more receptive to what you had to say.

Marcus's gaze fell on the elaborately wrought iron eagle mounted in the corner near the ceiling, holding the corners of two flags in its claws. One was the Imperial German war ensign, the other an Iron Cross on a black background. It made Marcus feel a warm flush of pride.

"Hey, Marcus. What are you thinking about?" Seth finally asked.

"Just appreciating the vexillolography," Marcus said, nodding at the flag.

"Gesundheit," said Seth, raising an eyebrow.

"It means the art of the flags. There's a lot of meaning behind every element in the colors and symbols." Marcus said.

"I've been meaning to ask you about that—not the flag, I mean, but all the Nazi stuff. Like, I know the Nazis had some cool shit and all, but I don't get why you and your, uh, _friends_ are all gung-ho about them. You're not even German." Seth pointed out.

Marcus chuckled, leaning forward. "You know, I'm _so_ glad you asked about the _good news...!"_ he said with mock brightness, doing his best door-knocking evangelist impression.

"Oh, God, spare me the sales pitch. Forget I said anything!" said Seth, covering his eyes.

They both laughed together, in that un-self-conscious way that only partially inebriated people could manage.

Marcus leaned back, sighing after the laughing fit passed. "Seriously, though, dude. I won't push, but do you really want to know?"

Seth shrugged. "I mean, kinda? I've always been more interested in the biker and metalhead scenes, but if you hang out around those long enough, you pick up a thing or two. I don't really get it, though. I mean, don't get me wrong, I hate those ABB motherfuckers, but I don't get the jump from that to, like, full-on Nazis."

"I think you understand more than you think," Marcus said, holding up a hand. "Maybe it'll help to give you an example. For me, I started coming around when I began noticing that something was really wrong with the world."

Seth scoffed. "There's a _lot_ wrong with the world. There's wars and Endbringers and the Water Crisis and all that shit."

"I mean besides the obvious. There's something rotten with _normal_ people, the way they think and act. You know, just culture in general," Marcus pressed, waving a finger in a circle as if to encompass the whole world. "Didn't everything seem so much more hopeful when we were kids? I mean, we were both born after the Golden Age of Superheroes ended, but things weren't so bad on the surface. Behemoth came around before I could really remember, but people didn't really know what that had _meant_ yet. Do you remember when Jörmungandr first appeared?"

"Who?" asked Seth, his brow knitting in confusion.

Marcus leaned in closer, quietly listing off the names of the beast. "Jörmungandr. The Second. The Serpent. _Leviathan_."

Marcus saw a spark of interest in Seth's eyes, and knew he'd hit pay dirt, a true connection. The truth that can only be uncovered by shared experience.

"I do," Seth said, his voice coming out hushed, subconsciously mirroring Marcus' own serious tone. "What's that got to do with Nazis, though?"

 _"_ _Everything,"_ Marcus said, spreading his arms wide. "It's all connected. I'll tell you the story, if you like."

Seth still looked a little skeptical, but he'd picked up on Marcus's serious mood. He nodded solemnly.

Marcus mentally girded himself, disciplining his thoughts into order. It was hard being a recruiter. He had to bare his soul and confront some heavy shit, the dark truths that everyone knew but preferred to ignore. And he had to do all that with total conviction and confidence, without flinching away from the uncomfortable parts. It opened Marcus up to mockery or attacks or joking deflections, but it was necessary. People could sense insincerity a mile away. He had to make himself vulnerable to be believed, then build that connection up into something strong.

Marcus took a deep breath, and began his story.

"One of my earliest memories was watching TV with my big sister, some cartoon or something. Suddenly, the movie cut out, and it started showing the news, so my sister tried changing the channel, but it was all the same thing on _every_ channel, talking about Jörmungandr appearing for the first time. I was just a little kid, I didn't know what was going on, and Cass wouldn't tell me, so I called out to Mom. She came into the living room, and then she just _froze_. I don't really remember what the news was saying, but I'll never forget the look on her face. How she went all still and white. Seeing my mom, standing there like a statue, just... I could tell she was rooted by pure _fear,_ and it scared me more than anything I'd ever seen in my life. Then she grabbed both of us, hugging us so hard it _hurt,_ and even though she couldn't stop _crying,_ she still didn't look away from the TV, not even once. We didn't understand what happened, but it was mom's reaction that made it _real_. After that, I saw the despair everywhere, but I didn't understand it, what that really _meant_ for the world, not until years later."

As Marcus spoke, he felt chills racing down his body, goosebumps rippling out over his arms at reliving the memory.

"Are you talking about Leviathan being the reason for the boat graveyard, and the city's economy getting fucked up?" Seth asked as Marcus took a drink to soothe his suddenly dry throat.

"That's only a tiny part of it. _Everything_ went downhill from there, _everywhere_. You and I, our generation, we could feel it even when we were kids, and growing up it only got worse. Think about it—when Jörmungandr sank Kyushu, that's when all the immigrants started flooding in. Not just in Brockton Bay with the ABB turning the place into a shithole, there's _millions_ of refugees all over, and it's only going to get a thousand times worse in a few years. So what's _wrong_ with people? They're all _terrified,_ but they're pretending that they aren't. People are too busy with sports or celebrities or drugs or whatever pointless, petty bullshit they use to distract themselves from thinking."

Seth nodded. "Oh yeah. It's all total bullshit, we can agree on that part. People would rather have their comfortable lies instead of the hard truth. I don't sign on to all the race stuff, though."

Marcus felt his cheeks flush a little with his frustration, and hoped it didn't show. The pitch had started well, but now it felt like he was losing Seth, so he decided to go for one of his trump cards. "About the race stuff, I get it. I do. We've been taught from birth it's bad. Kumbaya and give peace a chance and all that shit the mass media pushes to keep everyone in line. But you can just as easily say _fighting_ is bad. There's no room for that out in the _real_ world, where things like fighting and racism are sometimes _necessary_. I've heard it explained this way, and it really stuck with me: think of the world like a sinking ship. Your country—as in, your culture, that's the lifeboat."

Seth raised a skeptical eyebrow. "So you're saying we're like the _Titanic_ , and the Jews are like the iceberg or something?"

Marcus shook his head, resisting the urge to call out Seth's stupidity. "No, not at all. What I mean is, the ship's like the world, and it's already sinking, there's nothing we can do to stop it now. Think of white culture as the last lifeboat. Everyone knows it's their best chance, so everyone's flocking to it. But if too many people try to climb on the lifeboat, they'll sink the whole thing for everyone. Sure, you can give up your spot on the boat if you want to be _nice_ or whatever, but then you're just, y'know, adding to the problem, because the guy you let on wants to bring _his_ family, _his_ friends, and now suddenly everyone's fighting each other instead of defending the boat. The lifeboat sinks, everyone dies, and _nobody_ is better off just because you did the 'nice' thing. In order to survive, we have to _fight,_ and to fight we have to be united by something stronger. A shared culture, shared blood. I know no one _else_ is going to fight for me, all the other races only ever stick up for themselves. So why shouldn't we?"

Seth shrugged helplessly. "Look, I'm all for protecting my own culture. I don't have any problem with that, and I'm proud to be white too. It's a good thing, right? I don't know what else to tell you, though. All the Asians can fuck right off back to where they came from, but I don't see the point of being so hung up over the blacks and gays and Jews. It just seems... kinda pointless, you know?"

Marcus shook his head. "I'm sorry if it's hard to accept, but including blacks and gays and whatever else is a luxury we just can't _afford_. Black people and their problems are a liability in this fight, you don't have to hate them, but that's just a _fact_. They're less than 13% of the population, but they commit the majority of the crimes. White people have an IQ of 100 and black people have an IQ of 80. That's just the truth, and it won't change for anybody's politically correct _bullshit_. It's just nature, and it's nobody's _fault,_ but whose fault it is doesn't matter. What matters is _survival,_ and I'm sorry, but you're not gonna survive if you rely on black people or gay people. Just look at Africa. Just look at the Roman Empire."

"No, no, no. I get that part, but I just... does it _have_ to be all swastikas and Sieg heils and shit? I mean, no offense, but like, it seems like you're going too far in the other direction. This isn't Germany in the '30s. It feels like you're all trying to dress up for Halloween or something," said Seth, looking pointedly at the guy at the bar with a swastika tattoo on his neck.

Marcus waved his hand dismissively. "What, the symbols and all that? It's just ways for people to rebel, or support their favorite capes in the Empire. The symbolism is our way of saying _fuck the system._ It's about reclaiming our heritage from all the lies and bullshit, and some people..." Marcus gestured at Spencer's iron cross-decorated jacket before continuing, "...Just like that it drives the fuckers nuts."

"Okay, that's fine, I guess, I'm not against free speech or whatever." Seth said sulkily, taking a swig of his beer.

Nodding equably, Marcus tried to steer things back on track. "Letting people just do their own thing is okay when things are good, but we've _tried_ mashing people from different cultures together, and it just _doesn't work_. We need to try something else."

"Man, come on. It's not like the Nazis had the best track record either, they did some pretty fucked up shit too." said Seth, chuckling dryly. "Like, even if all you said was true, killing all the Jews or whatever just doesn't seem like it would _help_ anything, just make things even worse."

Marcus felt a flash of indignation at the jibe. It was genuinely disturbing to hear all the old fallacies and talking points trotted out robotically, almost verbatim. The sheep _always_ brought it around to the Holocaust, every single time.

"History is written by the victors, you know that. You've got to think for _yourself,"_ Marcus said, the words coming out more snidely than he intended. He took a quick, calming breath, and continued in a more mellow tone, "Allied propaganda only gets a pass because they won in the end. Nowadays, people think of fascism like this one-sided, cartoonish thing, just bad guys for Indiana Jones and Uncle Sam to punch. When normal people think of Nazis, they think of black-and-white newsreels with Hitler speaking passionately in German—but haven't you ever noticed they never include any subtitles? God forbid people hear a translation, or else they might end up _agreeing_ with him."

Seth frowned. "I mean, I've never been that into history. I guess I never thought about getting the other side of the story," he conceded.

"Well, don't just take _my_ word for it," Marcus said quickly, sensing an opportunity. "You should do your own research. You might be surprised by what you find. Bottom line, though, the world is in desperate need of _real_ heroes and warriors who'll fight for what's right."

Seth sighed, sagging down in his chair, holding his drink between his knees. "I dunno, man. You're right that the world's fucked, but it feels like you're just getting your hopes up."

Marcus leaned back and smiled. "Look around. You just see a couple of guys talking in a bar, right? But don't underestimate that. The Nazi Party in Germany started out as a bunch of passionate guys in a beer hall in Munich, and only ten years later they united their country, then they created one of the greatest war machines to ever exist. The only reason Germany lost was because they were badly outnumbered. Now it it's starting again, here, in the United States, the most powerful country in the world, and this time, we have parahumans that level the—"

"There you are, ranting about history _again,"_ Spencer interrupted as he walked up from behind Marcus, putting his hands on Marcus's shoulders and shooting a smile at Seth. "I swear, when we're not drinkin' or kickin' Chink ass, this nerd's got his head stuck in some old history book. He'll talk your ear off if you're not careful."

Marcus tilted his head far back to see Spencer. "Did you lose already?"

"Nah, just wanted a smoke break. Liza'll tan my hide if I light up in here. Wanna come with?" Spencer asked, already rummaging for the pack in his jacket pockets.

Marcus cocked his head, considering. Seth didn't smoke, so he wouldn't be joining them, but it would probably be best to let Seth stew on Marcus's words for a bit anyway. "Eh, sure. I could go for one."

Marcus got up and followed Spencer out the door. Rudy and Liza didn't appreciate people smoking out front—both of them were health nuts that hated secondhand smoke—so they'd set up a semi-enclosed little stoop in the side alley for smokers, with an overhang to ward away the rain and a pair of standing ashtrays.

Spencer lit up a cig, and offered Marcus one with the lighter.

Marcus lit his own, and took a lazy drag. Spencer didn't buy the best cigarettes, but at least he avoided the cheapest shit available.

Taking another drag, Marcus tried his best to savor the rich smoke despite the chilly night air. He was just about to take another pull when he heard a loud _thump_ from nearby, making him cough in surprise.

There was a shuffling sound in the alley, down on the side with the dead end. Someone was there the whole time? Marcus peered into the darkness, but it was almost impossible to see beyond the cone of wan, yellow light cast by the single bulb installed in the overhang. Marcus saw the guy in the shadows first, and lightly slapped Spencer's shoulder, pointing his friend towards the newcomer. It was a guy in a hoodie.

"The fuck d'you want?" Spencer asked, a bit muffled from the cigarette he held in his lips.

"Are you two Empire Eighty-Eight?" the hooded man asked tersely. He was fidgeting and trembling uncontrollably, which Marcus immediately pegged as drug withdrawal. As the man stepped closer to the light, Marcus could see he had that unmistakable hungry look to him, but he was also wearing Empire colors.

That gave Marcus pause, but his confusion resolved as quickly as it had arisen. This dude was clearly one of the Merchant's degenerates, probably trying to pick a fight or dress up as one of them and steal some drugs or something. The dumbass had picked the _worst_ possible place to do it, though.

Marcus and Spencer exchanged a skeptical look before refocusing on the junkie.

"Yeah, we're Empire—but just coming right up and asking, that's a first," said Spencer, smiling humorlessly. "But this ain't a fuckin' charity. We don't give freebies to losers on the street just 'cause they're white. Fuck off."

The hoodie guy said nothing, his gaze hawkish and intense. Marcus felt his stomach tense at the creepy look in the hooded man's eyes. He moved closer, striding right towards them.

Was this guy for real? He must have been jonesing _hard_ to think taking on two-on-one odds was a good idea.

"You asked for it, motherfucker," Spencer snarled, reaching into his jacket and pulling out his huge Ruger Blackhawk revolver. The dark gray metal made it almost impossible to see in the dark, but the menacing shape of Spencer's beloved .357 magnum would be unmistakable, even to a junkie.

Marcus didn't even have time to register what the hooded man was doing when his left hand slapped the gun out of Spencer's grip before he could even cock the hammer. In nearly the same instant, the hooded man's right hand seized Spencer by the neck, then he kicked Marcus in the gut with a visceral _crunch_ that radiated through Marcus's whole body. Pain exploded in his midsection as he was lifted off his feet by the force of the blow, his back slamming into the concrete ashtray and sending him spinning into the ground.

After a moment of disorientation, with blinding stars dancing in Marcus's vision, the pain truly hit in full, and he couldn't even _breathe_. It felt like he'd been broken in _half_. His stomach and back radiated with pure, overwhelming agony, and he curled up on his side, his beers and hamburger coming back up, the bitter acid and alcohol burning his throat and sinuses.

After the brief convulsion of vomiting ended, Marcus struggled to take the smallest of breaths. He blinked the stars out of his streaming eyes only to watch as the guy in the hoodie— _the unmasked cape,_ he realized—lifted Spencer off his feet by the neck.

The parahuman didn't even flinch as Spencer flailed and struggled, punching his face and clawing at his icy blue eyes. Then, the parahuman's arms _transformed_ somehow, sprouting into a mass of dark, jagged cables that stabbed into Spencer's body, dragging him into the monster whose entire upper body split apart into a flurry of countless lashing blades.

Spencer was _shredded_.

Spencer's clothes were ripped away and his body burst open like an overfilled grocery bag, blood and viscera splattering out of his dismembered body in unbelievable quantities. A moment later, the entrails were drawn into the monster's body like food getting sucked down into a blender. Marcus saw a pale, mauled section of Spencer's torso briefly surface from the seething mass, the meat and skin stretching obscenely as it was torn away from the bloody ribs, and a moment later the dripping, red segment of ribcage was crushed back down into the mass of fanged tentacles.

Marcus would have vomited again from sheer _terror_ if he'd had the capacity to, but for the moment all he could do was try and fail to breathe. Where his vision wasn't blurry from tears, there was blackness fading in around the edges, whether from lack of air or oncoming shock from his injury.

There were no thoughts of calling for help or fighting back. Marcus only felt bone-deep agony and overwhelming, electrifying fear. The need to be somewhere, _anywhere_ else paradoxically froze him in place, as if his body had overridden his brain and was trying to hide in plain sight or offer abject surrender. Spencer had just _died,_ it was unbelievable, it didn't make any _sense,_ this place was supposed to be _safe_ —but Marcus was certain that he was next.

The monster was resolving into a humanoid shape again. The thing compressed itself, crunching down and ejecting spurts of blood and chunks of gore like a squeezed sponge as it shrank down to the size and shape of a human again. Marcus felt the hot wetness splatter over him, but didn't dare blink or look away.

In moments, the tentacled thing had molded back together like clay and changed color to become the hooded figure once more, clothes and all. It was spotlessly clean despite standing in a huge, spreading pool of blood and bits of Spencer that cascaded down the short steps and into the alley beyond.

"Damn," said the monster wearing human skin. "All that and I'm still hungry."

Marcus could hardly believe his own ears. The thing sounded mildly disappointed, almost _bored,_ like he'd gotten the wrong order at a drive-thru.

He killed Spencer and _that_ was all he had to say?

That spark of rage was what finally broke Marcus free from the paralysis of terror.

He couldn't move much, but he saw where Spencer's Ruger had clattered against the wall and fallen nearby. With a desperate adrenaline-fueled lunge that ignited the pain in his back, Marcus grabbed the gun and aimed—

There was a blur of motion, a tight feeling in his arm and shoulder. His arm moved _wrongly,_ the angles not matching.

Marcus saw his right forearm falling in four pieces from the bloody stump of his elbow. Blood fountained from the stump, the warm wetness spreading over his shirt. It just felt numb.

looking up, Marcus saw that the monster had transformed its fingers into long, thin, scythe-like claws that were almost hypnotic in the effortless, quicksilver way they moved, like the swaying of a cobra about to strike. He looked away from the claws, and met the thing's pale, dead eyes. There was no anger, no regret, no humanity, just _hunger_. The thing didn't even care at all that Marcus was a human being, he realized in an instant of understanding. It just saw Marcus as an acceptable target.

Then the pain hit in earnest, a searing fire in Marcus's shoulder and arm. He let out what little breath he'd had left in a shuddering moan as he clutched the stump close to his chest.

No. No. No. _No_. This couldn't be happening. Not here. He had to get away...

Marcus tried to move, but he couldn't. He was too weak. He hurt so, so much, he was so tired. All he wanted was to go to sleep, and not have to deal with this pain anymore. He wanted to go to sleep and wake up in bed back home, back with his family.

Marcus squeezed his eyes shut, tears spilling out. He remembered all the stupid arguments he had with his family, how much they begged him to stay home and not join the Empire.

_I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry, Cass._

The last thing Marcus felt besides the pain and regret was the sensation of being lifted up off the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still with me after this chapter? Good. I was really nervous about this one, for obvious reasons. Humanizing Nazis and depicting their propaganda is always a perilous thing, although it is vitally important to the story to do so, for reasons that will become clear later. Needless to say, the opinions of the characters do not reflect the author's, yadda yadda. Marcus is supposed to come off as a jumped-up know-nothing wehraboo and a hypocrite, but still just a scared, misguided teen underneath. I hope that came through.


	11. Infection 2.2

**Infection 2.2**

Alex resisted the onslaught of memories from Marcus Fahy, and after just a moment, the flood of new information ended, a relief that was only compounded by the sensation of his body repairing itself. His internal anatomy was roughly half-complete now, which was still an immense improvement compared to the charred dregs his insides had been just moments before.

Now that something approaching mental clarity had returned, Alex looked around the blood-soaked alleyway, and his rush of satisfaction gave way to the chilling realization that he'd just _consumed two people out in public._ The only precaution he'd taken was to check that there weren't any witnesses or security cameras around, but he'd paid no thought to what would happen _after_ he consumed those two.

At any moment, someone from the bar might open the side door to come out for a smoke. Alex felt exposed, and the urge to flee rose up in him. He quickly quashed the instinct. He might have only seconds, but he had to _think_ —was there anything he needed to do to erase the evidence of the crime scene?

Alex bent down and picked up Spencer's revolver from the tacky pool of blood and other fluids. The gun had fallen from Marcus's severed hand before Alex had consumed it, and it was by far the largest thing left intact. To the right was a shiny shredded lump of something that was probably Marcus's cell phone, but Alex had consumed practically everything else, even down to Spencer's boot leather and belt buckle.

It was clear there was nothing Alex could do about the huge mess. With one last look around, he tore off back down the alley and jumped to the rooftops, leaping from building to building like a bat out of hell. He pushed his clamoring anxiety and paranoia into pure speed, until his body reached its limit.

The icy night wind screamed in Alex's ears and stung his eyes, but the blazing heat of his body perfectly cancelled it out, and for a few minutes he simply enjoyed the adrenaline-fueled rush as he successfully escaped.

Alex ran to the darkest corners of Brockton Bay, the decaying industrial ruins that had once been the Docks. He needed privacy, and time to think, and he knew of no better place to go for that.

After finding out he could use his tendrils and air compression to run vertically just as easily as he could horizontally, Alex soon found himself standing atop one of the gigantic, rusty cranes that had once been used for offloading cargo ships, feeling safely out of reach despite the vertigo-inducing height and total lack of a safety railing.

Now that he had time to gaze out over the city and think, he realized some things he really should have earlier.

By now, his general _modus operandi_ was obvious: _eat first, ask questions later_. Alex loved his power, but he fucking _despised_ the mindless hunger and loss of self-control that came with it. The cravings never seemed to _stop,_ only waxing and waning in severity.

Even after eating two people, Alex was still ravenously hungry by any coddled first-world standard. However, the differences between being hungry and true _starvation_ was like the difference between being itchy and being _flayed alive_. Starvation was an all-consuming agony that obliterated all restraint and rational thought, until it became the one and only priority of existence. It was that same force which drove the trapped inhabitants of colonial America and Leningrad to eat parts of their own still-living bodies, or even their own _children_.

Alex was just so sick of this. Sick of the constant feeling that his insides were an open wound, sick of the gnawing hunger, sick to _death_ of making hasty, unfocused mistakes. He was stuck in a catch-22, the downward spiral of the damned—the worse off he got, the less competent he became to fix it.

 _Fuck that_. Alex resolved to get up to top condition, no matter what. He didn't know how his body's condition scaled to his mental state, but if he had to guess, he would need to consume three or four more people in order to fix all the damage he'd sustained.

Before he could do that, though, he needed to find out how much the new memories were affecting his personality, if at all. If consuming memories really was a problem, he needed to find a solution—the obvious one being to remove or destroy the head first before consuming the body.

On the surface, destroying or removing the brain seemed like an extremely minor sacrifice against the very salient danger that personality bleed posed. The thing was, gaining memories was such a priceless advantage he might not be able to afford giving it up unless the risks were truly permanent and as dire as he feared. Compounding the temptation of taking more memories was the fact that consuming Spencer and Marcus had felt _nothing_ like consuming Lung, and that wasn't just wishful thinking. Alex had only been momentarily disoriented by the sheer magnitude of the information, but not completely overwhelmed by it, and immediately afterward he hadn't felt even the slightest bit confused about who he was.

That didn't necessarily mean his mind was unaffected, however. His power worked like that old saying, _you are what you eat,_ which really put his new diet of dumb-as-dirt gangsters and literal fucking Nazis into a disturbing new light. If only he'd thought of that before consuming them, he might have considered preying on people just as intelligent as him, but then again, that would inevitably lead to starvation.

Alex briefly smiled at his own internal joke, then blew out a long, weary sigh through his teeth. If he was being honest with himself, he was tired of his constant paranoia about personality changes, especially considering he couldn't even _remember_ who he was supposed to be in the first place. It was like closing the doors after the horses had already left the barn, really. Lung was one thing, but this particular paranoia seemed a bit baseless. He had no confusion about his identity, he didn't _feel_ any different, and even if he was too biased to judge that accurately, it wasn't like there was anyone else better qualified to notice any changes in his personality.

If Alex had to formalize the vague apprehension he was feeling, it was the fear that he'd continue eating more and more stupid, reprehensible people until all his original personality gradually slipped away too subtly for him to notice, like the Ship of Theseus gradually getting piece by piece replaced until no part of the original ship was left.

Carefully observing his own thoughts for any shifts, Alex trawled through the memories of the two gang members, looking for any interesting tidbits of information.

Upon closer inspection, it was actually kind of amazing how different Spencer's and Marcus's minds were, for all that they'd been each other's closest friends. How they saw each other was completely different from how they saw themselves, and it really drove home how much effort they both put into hiding their true selves behind social masks.

The first thing that came to notice was that Spencer DeWitt's memories were oddly flat and affectless. Spencer had never been able to mentally picture things the same normal way that everyone else could, and incredibly, neither Spencer nor anyone around him had ever noticed that his brain worked differently than theirs. Spencer had always thought that it was just a metaphor when people described seeing things in their heads. Spencer could still think and imagine things on an abstract level, but it was as if his mind's eye was blind, and aside from that baffling mental oddity, he was a painfully conceited and intolerably _boring_ son of a bitch.

Spencer was all style over substance, aesthetics over practicality. He smoked because it was cool, he drove a base trim automatic transmission V-6 Mustang, and he'd even bought that ridiculous single-action revolver because he thought revolvers were more _manly,_ and that had outweighed the practical advantage of being able to fire and reload quickly, or carry lots of bullets.

Spencer's memories weren't even useful for teaching any kind of lesson, aside from _'_ _avoid being born to shitty white trash parents.'_ Nor was their much insight to be gained from the convoluted mental gymnastics and painfully obvious denial he had regarding his closeted bisexuality. Unintentional comedy, _absolutely,_ but not insight.

Come to think, that was a really good sign. If Alex had found himself liking the same sorts of things Spencer liked—revolvers, country music, men—then that would be cause for concern, but Alex didn't find any of those things the least bit appealing. Likewise, he could see through Spencer's pathetic, insecure rationalizations about race and sexuality in an instant. They weren't revelatory to Alex, they were laughable.

Feeling bolder, Alex examined Marcus Fahy's memories next. He was quite different from Spencer, more thoughtful and introspective, though that wasn't saying much. Strangely, Marcus had actually come from a good family, and the idiot had joined the Empire in spite of his mother's and sister's increasingly desperate efforts to dissuade him. Marcus had died regretting his choice and wishing for more time with them, which made Alex feel profoundly uncomfortable and left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.

Marcus had been an ignorant, prideful little pissant, so wedded to the conspiratorial delusion that _he_ knew the hidden truth about the world that he threw away a family that Spencer or Lung would have killed to have. He was just as much of an obtuse hypocrite as Spencer, too—he'd been genuinely _proud_ of his Irish heritage. That was pretty rich coming from someone who styled himself as an intellectual and student of history, considering that dirt-poor Irish immigrants used to be regarded as violent, stupid, fast-breeding vermin that were genetically inferior to whites, using the exact same pseudoscientific arguments that Marcus himself applied to others.

"Testing, testing. Do I suddenly hate Jews? No. Black people? No. Asians? No. Gays? Nope, don't give a shit about any of them, either." Alex muttered, chuckling at the absurdity that he'd been worried the Nazis would rub off on him.

 _As if_ Alex would be swayed by the pablum spoon-fed to penniless retards to make them feel better about themselves. He had all the memories of a half-Chinese, half-Japanese leader of a pan-Asian gang, and that only highlighted how petty this bullshit was from all sides. Lung had also used racial hatred as a tool to keep his more gullible lackeys in line and supporting his rule, directing their tribalism at the whites. Unlike the various white and asian racists he could name, Alex didn't need to take credit for other people's accomplishments to feel good about himself.

With the personality bleed issue now resolved to Alex's satisfaction, he considered likely targets from the gang members' memories. His best shot would be to scout around one of the guarded caches and safe-houses in Krieg's little fiefdom near the border of ABB territory. Intermittent pressure from the ABB ensured they usually had between three and six enforcers guarding each location, all of them inside the except for a lookout to keep their presence largely hidden. If Alex could get through the lookout before they raised the alarm, he'd have a nice, private banquet laid out for him.

Simple enough, but the devil was in the details. Obviously, getting caught in the act would be a problem. He might get caught red-handed by heroes, villains, cops, civilians, or even his victims themselves.

Aside from being caught in the act or stumbling into another trap, Alex's biggest potential problem was being _tracked_. Cameras, witnesses, fingerprints, DNA. In fact, his DNA was probably all over that crime scene. He'd just have to avoid getting caught and connected to those crimes via testing, but that didn't help when it came to the cameras and witnesses. Wearing a hood was a step up from nothing, but it wasn't enough.

Tracking was a problem with high priority, but Alex had a good feeling about his options to solve it. With his powers, he already knew he could reshape his body both subconsciously and at will, but now he needed to find a private place to test the true extent of that ability.

The key word was _infiltration_. If he could use his shapeshifting powers to mimic someone's appearance, he wouldn't need to sneak around and blunder into traps, he could just be invited in through the front door.

Of the three other human templates Alex had, Lung was obviously not an option, being a half-dragon at the time Alex had consumed him, and an Asian besides. That left the two Nazis, neither of which were particularly useful, even if their remains hadn't been discovered by now. They were the best option Alex had at the moment though, and between the two, Alex had a strong preference to imitate the serious-minded Marcus rather than the jocular, annoying Spencer.

Now Alex just needed to test his shapeshifting abilities.

For this, he would need to go elsewhere. Alex took a vertigo-inducing running leap to the next rooftop, making his way south again.

The border between ABB and Empire territory couldn't even be compared to a demilitarized zone; it was more like no-man's land. It took little time for Alex to find an abandoned housing project. One in particular was a dark, boxy six-story building that looked almost Soviet in its depressing utilitarianism, all but identical to the buildings beside it. Though the streetlights still worked, the building and its nearly identical neighbors were lacking electricity. The exterior was bare gray brick, graffiti, and pig iron, in that order. Alex didn't even need to use any of his powers to get in. Previous generations of intrepid squatters had already taken bolt cutters to the chain link fence gating off the cracked pavement and weed patches ringing the condemned property long since, and the back fire exit was helpfully missing a doorknob.

The inside was, of course, black as pitch. Alex could see well in the dark, perhaps even superhumanly well if his memories were any indication, but nothing was penetrating this gloom. He went over to the boarded-up windows and ripped the plywood off with ease, and immediately regretted that the dim light from outside didn't show him _less_.

The place was a complete shambles, somehow blending the indescribable smells and accumulated moldy filth of a hoarder's pit with the empty, stripped desolation of a nuclear disaster exclusion zone. Entropy and water damage were winning the war of attrition against the graffiti on what remained of the walls, rendering most of it unrecognizable. Most of the ceiling was ripped open from people scavenging for metals and fittings to sell. Every footstep crunched, crackled, and _squished_ simultaneously. Alex briefly wondered if he could figure out how to turn off his sense of smell.

The strangest part of this place, though, was that from the few furnishings and the general look that remained, it seemed like this building had been abandoned in the _nineties,_ despite it being in a state of ruin that looked like the product of at least a century's neglect. Even the squatters and homeless had apparently moved on to greener pastures, ones with less gang activity and maybe one or two utilities still functioning.

Alex did a quick sweep of the ground floor, confirming he had the place all to himself. And really, despite all the myriad ways this building was extremely wanting, that privacy alone qualified it as a successful find according to his less-than-stringent criteria.

Finding a pitch-black bathroom and navigating by touch, Alex found the smooth surface of the mirror he was looking for. He ripped it out of the wall like he did the plywood and carried it back to the entryway. He leaned the four-foot-tall mirror against the wall so he could see himself. The glass was partially broken from where he'd none-too-gently removed it, and it was very grimy, but it was serviceable, just barely catching enough of the light from outside for Alex to see himself.

It was time.

Taking a deep breath, Alex began the transformation slowly, careful to keep his own brain intact.

He started from his feet and worked his way up. The transformation reached his navel, his chest, his neck. Alex's clothes changed to become Marcus's black band shirt and torn jeans. The strange part was that his body still felt like a body was _supposed_ to feel, even though it was someone else's.

As his head began to change, Alex altered the transformation, changing only the surface layers at first, hair and skin, then going deeper into flesh and bone, controlling the transformation with a slow deliberation that made the effect almost artistic. His face was no longer his own. It was incredibly surreal seeing such familiar, yet alien features emerge in a dark bathroom mirror. It reminded him of the old myth about seeing the reflection of Bloody Mary, but this was all too real.

The disguise was a success. He looked _exactly_ like Marcus—although Marcus didn't really look like himself with such eerie, dim lighting either. All the same, it was accurate. A nearly-perfect replica.

Alex leaned closer to the mirror, examining himself. The body was an exact match, but he knew right away the disguise was flawed. It was still _Alex_. Marcus's memories were there, but Alex was still himself. He could see that it was still _him_ staring out from inside Marcus, all the same expressions, posture, and subconscious tics added up to an extraordinary difference in how they looked, even with the same body. Alex would seem profoundly _off_ to anyone who had known Marcus.

Alex knew he had to go further. All the instincts of his body and mind were telling him that there was an actual simulacrum of Marcus waiting at the end of this incomplete process, a _truly_ flawless imitation, just like Lung's body and mind had been real enough to fool even Alex temporarily. He didn't know how he knew it would work, but he did, and just like with the running and claws, Alex was learning to trust his instincts.

Alex _wanted_ that perfect imitation to be his, he wanted to dominate it and not the other way around. He grit his new teeth. Now he had no choice but to go through with it. Alex had to prove he _could,_ even if only to himself. If he backed down before his own power, he'd never be able to do what it takes to survive.

He continued the transformation further into his head, even though it felt like he was tightening a noose around his own neck. He was retreating back into the skull cavity and the brain itself, the last, most essential vestige of Alex Mercer. When he felt something stirring, he stopped once again. Already, he could sense Marcus's old memories rising to the surface, the ghost of muscle memory and ingrained habits that came from inhabiting this body. Was that coming from the _brain stem?_

The tension and sense of mental violation was just too much. Forming his hand into Lung's claws, he let out a teenager's shout of frustration that echoed in the broken silence, he slashed at the mirror with a deafening crash, shattering the mirror into countless shards and chunks of wall plaster that rained down harmlessly against his metallic claws. He stood like that for a few seconds, breathing heavily, noticing that even the way the air moved through his different mouth and throat made a subtly different sound from his own breathing.

"I am Alexander James Mercer," he growled in Marcus's younger voice. "No matter what body I wear."

The words and claws were oddly reassuring. They served as a reminder. Alex still had his own agency. His templates were still intact. He would still have his original brain to return to, even if he was using another one for a while. Even before he'd known what he was doing, in those moments of confusion where he didn't know whether he was Kenta or Alex, Lung had still _lost_ to an Alex that was barely more than a reduced, animalistic husk. Alex was so much _more_ than that now. He had his faculties intact—well, mostly intact—and he had several times more memories and experiences to his name. He would not allow himself to be subsumed by the mere _echo_ of a personality.

Alex changed the claws back into Marcus's hands, and then made the final change, replacing the neocortex of his brain.

In a half-second, Alex was struck deaf and blind, and his mind fragmented and scattered to the winds like so many dandelion seeds. The sensation was almost indescribable. It was like Marcus's body was a jigsaw puzzle, and Alex's mind had been shattered into thousands of shards that governed all the individual pieces of the body, each no larger than the first knuckle of his index finger. Each piece knew what its neighbors were thinking and feeling, so that every part of the body networked together in a mosaic of consciousness.

Just as Marcus's brain finished its reconstruction, the fragments of flesh-consciousness that corresponded to the brain were overlaid with a deluge of new sensations and feelings. The sensations—the _overlapping perspective—_ propagated outwards to all the other pieces in his body, and suddenly Alex was able to feel his whole body as one single thing again. He could perceive his environment again, this time by proxy, through Marcus's perceptions rather than his own.

It was utterly bizarre. Alex's mind was split in two. His proprioception wasn't nearly granular enough for him to feel his own neurons firing, but his copy of Marcus's brain seemed fully accurate and functional. It was _quiescent,_ but not asleep. More like a gun sitting on a table, waiting to be picked up and fired.

The mosaic of Alex mentally prodded the new, second mind, but it was more like an altered mirror image of himself, whole and singular, rather than a second, separate intelligence. It seemed to lack any sort of reaction or agency. There was no struggle between the two halves of Alex's consciousness, certainly not the titanic tug-of-war Alex had feared.

But what did this copied Marcus-brain even do? He could access Marcus's memories easily enough in his original body, but if his theory was correct, he should be able to create a simulacrum of Marcus with this brain.

Alex directed his arm to rise.

His arm rose, but it felt more like Alex was puppeteering it through his own collection of individual pieces rather than moving it naturally, via Marcus's brain. It was still undoubtedly Marcus's arm, matching his memories down to the pathetic peach fuzz he called body hair and the familiar constellations of freckles, but the movement was wrong. Fakery.

How did Alex _pretend_ to be Marcus? Just... let the body do what it wants? He _was_ the body, now. Ideally, there would be some kind of autopilot Alex could engage that would allow Alex to mimic Marcus like this.

Alex stood there for a minute, staring straight ahead, thinking furiously.

In the end, he tried releasing his iron grip of control, settling into the singular mirror-consciousness and letting it take over.

The change was immediate.

Suddenly it was _Alex_ in the driver's seat of Marcus's brain, instead of puppeteering his body directly through the mosaic. It was like an optical illusion, or a shift of perspective. Suddenly the fragmentary-Alex that comprised his body was the mirror image, and Alex's singular consciousness was in control of his body through Marcus.

Marcus was not _there,_ not exactly, but suddenly Alex knew exactly what Marcus would do or say in this exact situation. It was more like Marcus was an elaborate persona of Alex's, rather than his own separate person. It wasn't really like an autopilot switch at all, it was like a role performed by the world's most dedicated method actor, or perhaps more like Alex was a demon possessing Marcus. Alex liked the latter analogy better. He still had all the agency and all his own memories, but in the moment he had Marcus's personality effortlessly under his control.

In that moment, Alex was absolutely certain that if the actual Marcus hadn't died and was standing next to him right this moment, he would naturally react in the exact same way, and not a single person on Earth would be able to distinguish any difference in their memories or personality.

The simulacrum of Marcus looked around. His movements were more furtive and birdlike than Alex's, his eyes shifting more often from place to place.

Alex was one step removed from direct control, but it wasn't frightening. He didn't have to think as much. He didn't even really have to think about things like walking, he just needed to focus on a direction and Marcus would go there automatically. Even though his simulacrum of Marcus was anxious and confused, reacting to his unexpected new environment subconsciously, Alex didn't feel any of it directly. He genuinely experienced Marcus's emotions, but it was as if they were happening to someone else, which as far as Alex could tell, was what was actually happening.

Alex didn't know whether Marcus's simulacrum was inanimate, or if it was alive but completely helpless to fight Alex for control, but either way was equally optimal for his purposes. None of his fears about personality bleed had seemingly come to pass. In all likelihood, Lung really was an exception, due to the extraordinary circumstances.

A profound sense of relief flooded through Alex, an emotion which wasn't reflected by his nervous body at all. There wasn't even the slightest twitch of his lips, and his satisfaction only grew upon noticing that. Alex was truly the master of this simulacrum. To prove that, he changed back into his normal form, and luxuriated in the responsive feeling of being his true self again, of controlling his own body without going through an intermediary.

Feeling encouraged by his success, Alex wanted to see if he could do something about his true form. His waxy, bloodless skin made him look like he would be more at home laying on a table in a morgue rather than standing up and moving around.

Alex recalled the template of Marcus, who had a pale but healthy complexion. He tried to take only that specific aspect and push it into his own body. He held up his hands to the window and watched them for changes.

Sure enough, a healthy color crept back into his skin. The difference wasn't too drastic, but it instantly made him look more normal.

Next were Alex's eyes. They were an incredibly pale blue, which he thought was a bit too distinctive. He recalled Spencer's template, the slightly darker but still light blue eyes Spencer had been so inordinately proud of. With another shift, Alex knew without needing any confirmation that his own eyes had become an exact copy of that color.

Alex grinned. Three out of three experiments had been successful, and this part was _easy_. All he had to do now was make sure this normalized appearance could qualify as its own template. He reverted back to his original pallid template, and shifted back again. This time, it was almost instantaneous, and took no additional effort or focus to remember to change his skin and eyes.

His smile widened. He probably looked half-crazed right now, but he didn't care.

For the first time, Alex felt comfortable enough to lower his hood, exposing his messy, wavy black hair. The hood had helped hide his features, but now he had nothing he needed to hide. Now the hood only served to make him look more shifty and untrustworthy, so he didn't need to wear it up anymore. The benefits to his peripheral vision _alone_ made it worthwhile.

Alex stepped out of the decrepit building and into the night in high spirits, impatient to test his new ability.

Taking Marcus's shape, Alex headed straight for an Empire Eighty-Eight gun storehouse in Alabaster's territory. He knew it would be lightly defended, since the cache location was still thought to be hidden.

After only a few minutes of walking, Alex found the gun storehouse. Unlike the ABB's more centralized storehouses in old shuttered businesses and factories, this storehouse was literally just a house. It was one of the ubiquitous narrow old two-story houses that littered the residential areas, and it belonged to Randall Greer, one of the gang's middle-aged drug distributors. No one actually lived there, but it was under constant guard nonetheless.

As Alex drew near to the house, he used a little ingenuity and judicious shapeshifting to reverse the process he'd used to make his templates whole and uninjured. He added in all the injuries Kenta and Marcus had possessed at the time Alex had consumed them, except for the missing arm. All of those horrible wounds combined made his Marcus template look like he'd lost a fight with a wood chipper. His skin was horribly mangled and bruised, and the only flaw in the disguise was that Alex had a very limited quantity of fresh blood from his victims still sloshing around in his body, and it was somewhat diluted, but smearing what little he had available around completed the visual effect nicely.

Alex retreated into his simulacrum of Marcus, and directed it to run up to the house and pound nonstop on the door.

"Randall! Open up! It's Marcus!" Alex called out, his voice hoarse and nearly breaking.

The sounds of the TV inside cut out. Moments later, the peeling white front door was yanked open, revealing the heavyset Randall, and his face went from ruddy with anger to white with shock.

"Jesus _Christ!"_ Randall gaped. "What the fuck happened to you!?"

Alex shoved past the startled man, staggering into the messy living room of the house while clinging to his arm as though it were limp and useless. Inside, Alex recognized Kenneth, a runner, and Mason, an enforcer. Both of them bolted up from where they'd been sitting on the couch, coming closer to Alex as he pretended to slump against the wall.

"Is your arm broken? Who _did_ this!?" Mason demanded.

"It was the ABB," Alex gasped. "The motherfuckers killed Spencer. Right in front of me. I... s-shit, I think one of the bullets hit me..."

Alex was a bit disappointed that the Marcus simulacrum apparently wasn't a very convincing actor, but the disguise and entrance was suitably dramatic to lure all three men into close range.

"I just heard you got taken from the Eagle's nest, everyone thought you were _dead!"_ Kenneth said, pulling out his phone. "I'll call Eddie, he can get you to see Othala for healing—"

Alex gave no sign or warning. As soon as Randall had closed the door and stepped into arm's reach, Alex transformed his hands into sword-length claws and slashed them all to pieces with contemptuous ease, showering the wooden floor with blood and entrails.

The black feeder tendrils went to work immediately, consuming Mason and Randall. Alex did his best to ignore the flash of their minds imprinting on his own, and held himself off from consuming Kenneth right away.

There were a few things Alex wanted to try, first.

Alex speared the decapitated, dismembered torso and lifted it up, letting the body weight impale it further on his claws. Alex allowed the blood to channel into tendrils that broke out over his arm, and tested it for edibility. If vampirism was a viable option, it would be better to know than not.

The result was disappointing. For all intents and purposes, blood was like flavored water. Even worse, Alex couldn't stop himself from crushing most of the fluids out of the bodies, otherwise he couldn't compress himself back down to his human size and shape.

There was no other option, then. Alex would just have to find a way to deal with the fact that he left behind an astounding amount of blood whenever he consumed.

That could wait, though. Alex first needed to see what his strength was _really_ like in proportion to the human body. He changed his hands back to human and grabbed Kenneth's body, testing its durability. It was disgusting, but Alex needed to know the boundaries so that he didn't have an unfortunate public accident with any humans he wasn't trying to dismember.

What Alex did next was almost enough to put him off his eternal appetite. If he hadn't been able to consume anything on his outer layers, he'd have been absolutely _drenched_.

The verdict? Relative to the limits of his strength, splitting and degloving human skin was as easy as peeling an overripe banana, and snapping human bone took less effort than breaking celery.

Alex was still hungry, so he didn't poke around too much beyond that, but even what little he discovered was worthwhile.

Despite his radically recalibrated strength, Alex wasn't any more clumsy or prone to breaking things that he didn't want to break. He was perfectly capable of roughly gripping skin without tearing it, and squeezing bones hard without crushing them, and these actions still felt completely normal. It was more like he no longer had an upper limit to his strength, rather than the entire scale of his strength shifting to the stronger end. He had plenty of experience operating within human limits, but he still had little idea how to operate in forces that were orders of magnitude beyond what he was accustomed to.

It had certainly been a productive night.

Of Mason, Randall, and Kenneth, a cursory search of their memories revealed nothing really noteworthy or different, aside from Mason's experience of being a young father and Randall's prolific habit of drugging and raping girls at bars and nightclubs, neither of which Alex was interested in examining further. Their memories helped him get a sense of the bigger picture of the gang, but it was hardly anything groundbreaking or new, not like Lung had been.

Of course, it made sense Alex would get diminishing returns, especially from a gang that idolized homogeneity above all else.

Consuming them hadn't been a waste of time by any stretch of the imagination, though. With the gangsters' biomass, Alex had managed to regenerate most of his internal damage, and now a good nine-tenths of his body felt whole and healthy. He felt so much more _solid,_ now, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. There was also a strange feeling of self-control and alertness on top of that, like he had sobered up and gotten a good night's sleep. The wracking pain from his wounds had almost completely vanished, and with it, so had the distraction it caused. Of course, he was still aching from hunger, but it was far more tolerable now.

After Alex had finished off the guards, he'd had a fun time sifting through the weapons they'd been hoarding from their various suppliers. There was quantity but not much variety, so he'd quickly decided on what he wanted to take. He scored a dozen fragmentation grenades, a nice M9 Beretta, and some spare magazines. The black semiautomatic was a vastly more practical supplement to Spencer's punchy but slow single-action .357 Magnum Ruger. There hadn't been much money to loot at all, a mere four hundred or so for the guards' incidentals, but it was better than nothing.

Alex didn't delay at the storehouse for long. As his first and final act of cleanup, he put the gas oven on full blast and used Randall's lighter to start a fire in the living room.

With the early light of predawn just peeking out over the horizon, Alex headed out wearing Kenneth's average-looking face, and walked casually down the residential street.

The distant explosion came long before Alex heard any sirens.

He had a feeling today was going to be a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, another long chapter this week! I considered splitting it up, but decided against it. The next chapter coming out is simply too important—the second encounter of Alex and Taylor!


	12. Infection 2.3

**Infection 2.3**

I had gone to bed early, and even though I was more exhausted than I'd been in years, sleep still wouldn't come to me. I tossed and turned under the covers, my mind racing with the events of the day.

The last twenty-four hours were conspiring to kill me, I decided. There was no other explanation for the battles and crises and secrets and lies that I'd somehow found myself juggling that hadn't been there as recently as Sunday.

And here was another to add to the pile.

I'd met with the Undersiders that afternoon, on the roof of the building just opposite of the fire-gutted ruin that stood as a monument of that surreal battle. Against my better judgement, I'd decided to hear out their offer and take their money.

It was concerning, to say the least. Maybe it was just paranoia, but I couldn't help but wonder why some mysterious 'boss' would want to pay a group of parahuman teenagers to form a villain gang and make trouble. It seemed significant, because there had to be unseen strings attached—some kind of bigger agenda that the Undersiders played into. Most of them didn't even seem to think it was that weird, or want to know whose tune they were dancing to.

But I wanted to know. Every scrap of information in the cape world was precious, and this could potentially be something huge, something that I could make my name on—as soon as I figured out what I wanted to call myself, that is.

If I just left things as they were and refused the Undersiders' offer to join the team, I would have gained two grand, one lunch box, three names, and knowledge of one possible conspiracy. I couldn't say that it hadn't been a _productive_ fishing expedition. But if I was being honest with myself, I was intrigued.

The Undersiders didn't seem like _bad_ villains, in the sense that they didn't come off as monstrous criminals like Hookwolf and Oni Lee, but more like relatively harmless troublemakers like Über and Leet. Bitch was a possible exception, considering she didn't show up at the meeting and she had those warnings on her PHO article. On the whole, though, their shadowy boss seemed like the _real_ problem, here, not the friendly and obviously teenaged capes that tried to recruit me. I stood to learn so much more if I could just string things along with the Undersiders a bit longer.

I'd been so tempted to accept their offer right there on the rooftop, but then, just as I'd been about to say yes, I belatedly _remembered_.

Earlier I had told Armsmaster and Alex that I was an independent hero. I'd unintentionally convinced the Undersiders that they needed to 'thank' Alex, too, so they would be on the lookout for him. If they did run into each other, he'd probably be confused and let slip my real affiliation.

Fuck my life.

There was no telling how the Undersiders would react to that. I could claim I was lying to him, but I was unsure that my denials would be convincing enough, and I had the horrifying thought that they might decide to make me _prove_ I was a villain by forcing me to do something I could never take back.

I had to preemptively tell Alex and Armsmaster, before either of them came across me again with the Undersiders and blew my cover or worse. Alex might have claimed he had no interest in fighting villains, but he definitely hadn't hesitated or pulled any punches when he'd been fighting Lung. I did _not_ want to become the next target of his anger, nor did I want to get arrested by Armsmaster, for that matter.

The best first step was probably another trip to the library, where I could safely send a message to Alex over PHO. Or, if I was lucky, I could just find Alex there again. He was homeless, obviously, so I doubted he would be elsewhere, particularly if he wanted to do more research. He'd need to be there anyway if he wanted to periodically check PHO for messages from me, in all likelihood—I doubted there were many other opportunities for him to use a computer.

I turned over on my side, and let the dread ebb away. I had a plan, and I was going to stick to it. I had a handle on things, I could do this.

I just had to keep telling myself that.

The next morning, I'd caught the bus to school, but once I got there, I'd almost immediately been confronted by Sophia at the front entrance. She'd raised her fist to her eyes in a mocking pantomime of crying, and just like that I was _done._ There was no way I had the endurance to withstand the fallout of Emma's successful jab yesterday.

In the interests of increasing my rapport with the Bay's newest rogue and keeping my own sanity, I decided to skip the ritualized torture that was school and return to the library earlier than I'd intended. It was half past nine when I'd left, giving me plenty of time.

First I returned home, switching my brand-new school backpack for the older spare I used for corralling what I considered my hero supplies, including my costume, pepper spray, various coded notebooks, and tools. After the bullies had ruined my old school backpack as well as my art midterm and World Issues textbook by pouring grape juice all over it, I wasn't about to take any chances with my new backpack.

Besides, I was going out to do cape business, and I might need my costume, just in case. I wasn't going to kid myself that I was going to do any of my homework at the library anyway.

I headed out to the library on foot. It would have been just my luck if I'd run into, say, Hookwolf and Lady Photon duking it out in the streets on my way there, but the trip was fairly uneventful. There was a distant plume of smoke on the horizon and the periodic fire truck or cop car passed by, lights flashing and sirens blaring, but whatever was going on was happening far away from my destination. That didn't reassure me, though, it just made me wonder if some other shoe was about to drop.

As I neared the library, I felt the now-familiar spike of pain and alarm as my powers interacted with Alex's bizarre biology. I quickly brought it under control, and discerned that Alex was making his way towards the third floor stairs.

I made a snap decision to take a leaf from the Undersiders' book and meet Alex face-to-face this time—I needed every scrap of credibility and trust I could muster, with the news I was about to deliver. I directed a hornet to me, and dropped my backpack to the ground, fishing out my hero notebook and a pen. I wrote MEET ME AT THE CAFÉ in the corner of a page and tore it off, giving it to my tiny messenger.

As I tried to find a way to Alex with the hornet, I zipped up my backpack and hurried to the library café, which was adjacent to the front desk at the first floor entrance. I didn't even stop to order anything, just in case someone else came along and snagged the most private booth.

I sat at the furthest booth from the door, and refocused on monitoring the hornet's progress towards Alex.

I could feel it as Alex startled and turned his head to face the hornet. It seemed like he might have been saying something, but I couldn't make it out with the hornet's primitive sense of hearing, and I was filtering out my sense of Alex's body too much to try to match the distorted sounds with the way his mouth was moving.

I closed my eyes in the face of the oncoming headache and slowly, cautiously increased my power's input from Alex.

It was getting easier, I noticed. The pain wasn't as bad. It was like when I'd first gotten my powers, and the senses of the bugs had overwhelmed me. I'd quickly gotten used to it then, even though I tuned it out 99% of the time now, except for their position in space and their sense of touch, which translated much better to human senses than hearing or vision. Apparently, either my power or my own skill at using it adapted quickly to new things.

As the flow of information gradually increased, giving me the relative locations of his body's constituent little sparks of awareness, I was shocked to find that instead of a mostly hollow, rotted interior, Alex's insides were now mostly solid, forming an internal anatomy that was recognizably human. There were still a few hollow spaces and mangled organs that were strewn with tendrils as reinforcement, but it had regenerated a ton compared to the shreds it had been earlier, and the resulting flesh and tendrils seemed incredibly dense and sturdy in a way that was difficult to make sense of. Beyond my shock at sensing his body altered from before—or was it restoring to a human state?—I noticed that as I'd been focusing, my tactile sense of his body was starting to get a bit _too_ sharp.

I clamped down on my power like my very life depended on it, mortified that I'd come close to unintentionally invading his privacy. I hadn't actually seen anything, because thankfully my mind's eye didn't process the information my power gave me visually unless I was specifically tapping into sight, but my vague awareness of his relative positioning and his sense of touch had still strayed uncomfortably close to being the tactile sensation of inhabiting a _male_ body. Compared to the bugs, the sensation had been familiar yet profoundly, indescribably _wrong._

I opened my eyes and looked around, desperate for some kind of distraction I could use to forget what it felt like to be male. I'd already been bullied relentlessly for my flat chest and lack of feminine curves, and I felt bad enough about my body as a result, but that had been _viscerally_ disturbing on a whole other level.

It was a lot easier to make that connection now that Alex was more human and less monstrous, but I should have anticipated the problem of using my power's senses on him. I was horrified with myself at just how casually I'd decided to invade his privacy, and it wasn't even something I could brush off as an honest mistake. I'd subconsciously assumed he was still inhuman, and therefore lacked any modesty or anything to hide. It was a horrible, thoughtless, bigoted assumption to make— _of course_ Case 53s would still value their privacy, they had more reasons than anyone to be ashamed of their bodies. That he'd been inhuman before didn't make what I did any better, it actually made it _worse_.

I had to get it together. I'd shut off everything except my sense of where Alex was, and I could feel him getting closer. This was the very _last_ thing I needed going into this meeting.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, and tried to focus.

Right on cue, Alex appeared at the entrance of the café. As he got within fifty feet, he shot me a passing glance, then after he went a few more steps, he did a double-take.

I gave him a little wave to confirm it was me, then immediately felt immature for doing so. That was _not_ the tone I wanted to strike for a surreptitious plainclothes parahuman meeting.

Seeing him up close, I realized that Alex's external appearance seemed a lot more normal, and not just because he wasn't wearing his hood up indoors anymore. His skin had regained a healthy color, and the dark bags under his eyes that I'd noticed yesterday were gone. Apparently, his improved internal condition showed on the outside as well.

"Um, hello again, Alex. I hope you don't mind that I, uh, came here in person this time," I said, trying to smile at him in spite of the awful awkwardness and guilt churning inside me. "I'm—you know me as Bug, but my real name is Taylor."

I felt like kicking myself for that introduction. _Smooth, Taylor, very smooth._

Alex was silent. Maybe I was being biased by my knowledge that he was a Case 53, but his pale blue eyes and low, hunched body language were subtly _off_. They seemed vaguely animalistic, like some predator that alternated between tense stillness and explosive movement. It was probably some subtle effect of his mutated body, so I tried not to judge him for it, but the awkwardness only became more suffocating as I fidgeted uncomfortably under his cold, hawkish gaze.

At last, he blinked and looked away, then sat down across from me. The booth creaked loudly under his weight. He looked at me again and shook his head.

"...A child. Of course," said Alex with a dark little chuckle, as if my age were a joke made at his expense. "Just how old _are_ you?"

"I'm seventeen," I lied. His eyes locked back on mine and narrowed, and I instinctively looked down. I didn't know if he believed me, even though I was pretty tall for my age and my glasses made me look a bit older. Was he going to make an issue out of this? Was he going to dismiss anything I had to say just because I was a teenager?

"So... Have you had any luck finding your footing lately?" I prompted, after it didn't seem he would say anything more. At this point, I just wanted him thinking about anything except whether I was lying about my age.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. I went hungry for a bit, but I had a _very_ productive night, and I'm feeling better now after having a decent meal." Alex answered with cool smugness.

"What did you do, exactly?" I asked, feeling a little uneasy.

"Found some more ABB muggers, and I turned the tables. Dinner was on them. They didn't even know what hit 'em." Alex said, smirking.

"This is Brockton Bay, I should have guessed as much," I muttered. I felt torn between guilt at not helping him yesterday and annoyance that he'd thought keeping his pride by refusing my charity was worth going hungry and even risking getting shot.

"Yeah, it's a _charming_ place," Alex said with palpable sarcasm. "You really can't find hospitality like this anywhere else."

"Speaking of which, have you found a place to stay?" I asked, trying my best to be diplomatic.

"No luck on that yet," said Alex, waving dismissively. "It doesn't really matter. I don't think I get tired or need to sleep. I've been awake since Sunday night, and I still feel completely rested."

"I _wish_ I had that ability, I've been sacrificing my sleep for my powers basically since I got them. So, what are you looking for here? Anything I can help with?" I asked.

Alex shook his head. "I was trying to establish my background. I still don't have any memories of my life—just sort of vague feelings and impressions—but from my skills and technical vocabulary, I think I might have been some kind of scientist or doctor. Whatever it is, there's a lot of chemistry and biology involved, I'm still narrowing it down. I _was_ quite enjoying myself, before your arrival."

I cleared my throat awkwardly at Alex's unsubtle hint. Somehow, I found it easier to imagine Alex as an arrogant, antisocial scientist rather than a physician who was expected to deal with patients with tact and bedside manner.

"Uh, anyway, I hope you find what you're looking for," I said, hoping I sounded sincere.

"Why don't we skip the smalltalk, and you can tell me what it is you really want." Alex said curtly.

I pushed down my offense at that. Okay, maybe I hadn't summoned him here just to ask about his well-being, but he didn't _know_ that. I was half-tempted to call him out on it and piously pretend I really was just wondering how he was doing, but I still felt guilty about earlier, and I came here to ask him for a favor, not butt heads with him.

I held out my hands beseechingly. "I've got some, ah, disclosures to get out of the way."

Alex's only response was to raise an eyebrow, which I took as a sign to continue. "After we met here yesterday, I was approached by the Undersiders. They offered me a spot on their team, and I'm thinking about joining up."

"So, not even a full day after claiming you want to be a hero, you're thinking about joining the _villains."_ Alex said coldly, looking at me like I had just used up my right to exist.

I felt my pulse grow louder in my ears. Damn it, I should have _known_ that announcing my intention to join a villain group would cause problems. I spoke quickly, trying to defuse the situation. "No, no, I still want to be a hero, I was just thinking about taking their offer so I could find out more about them and turn them in. Armsmaster said they've been really good at evading capture, but they're basically just teenage thieves with superpowers. The real problem is their _boss,_ the one paying them to commit crimes. They won't tell me who's behind them yet, so I'm considering going undercover."

Alex leaned back in his booth, shaking his head in amazement. "Holy shit, what a terrible fucking idea. You are one hundred and ten percent out of your goddamned mind, kid."

I bristled at that. "It could be an opportunity to find out something that could be _very_ important, an opportunity to get a whole parahuman gang off the streets!"

"Lower your _fucking_ voice," Alex hissed in a low undertone.

I looked around, but it seemed no one had heard or noticed my slightly-louder-than-normal outburst. This was unquestionably the noisiest part of the library, with various coffee machines running, people ordering food and drinks and talking to one another, but it was tapering off from the breakfast rush. It looked like the café had been designed to insulate noise, with a long wall cutting them off from the quiet rest of the library, and each booth sitting in its own little nook on either wall with free-standing tables and chairs in between. Even so, I was just lucky that the closest person was a girl two booths away, wearing headphones.

I felt my cheeks heating up in embarrassment. That hadn't been like me, not at all. The Heberts had a temper, but I had spent so long trying to disappear into the background that I seemed to have lost some self-control along the way. It didn't help that Alex was already one of the more aggravating adults I'd ever come across.

"Sorry," I said quietly, withdrawing in on myself. "It's been... a stressful two days. I barely even started my hero career before all this stuff just happened all at once."

Alex gave me an unimpressed look. "It's your funeral. I'm still waiting to hear the part where this matters to me."

I flinched a bit at that. He was so rude and self-centered it kind of bypassed offense and just made me feel a bit bewildered at how blunt he was. I put it aside and pressed on. "The reason I bring this up is because I wanted to make sure you knew I'm only going to be _faking_ joining the Undersiders. They were looking to get on your good side, too, so I didn't want to risk it if you found out and wanted to ask why I was on their team."

"Uh-huh," Alex said with dry skepticism. "That's assuming you aren't just _lying_ to me and plan on joining them for real, but don't want me causing you _problems_ with your new buddies."

I bit back an angry response, and replied in a calm tone that was barely above a whisper. "How can I prove to you I'm a hero?"

"You can't," Alex said with a shrug. "Anything you might say or do could be a lie. Even if you were to go to the Protectorate and turn in the Undersiders right now, that might just be a ploy to deflect suspicion from yourself."

"Deflect—but I haven't even _done_ anything yet to deflect _from!"_ I said indignantly.

Alex held up his hands. "Relax, kid. I'm just making a point that I won't take _anyone's_ words as proof of anything. I'm pretty sure you're not lying, though, since you nearly got yourself shot trying to help me. Also, I find it hard to believe _anyone_ would be harebrained enough to start off their new identity as a _triple_ agent. Trying to become a _double_ agent is audacious enough as it is."

Hearing Alex acknowledge the one heroic thing I'd done so far extinguished my rising anger like a doused candle. It was sort of pathetic that just one single heroic act could affect me so much, but it was pretty much the _only_ important thing that I actually felt proud of anymore, the only concrete proof I had that I really could be a hero instead of just daydreaming and writing journals about it.

I sighed and pushed up my glasses to rub at my eyes. "I _know_ it's risky. Believe me, I do. If I'm being honest, I could really use your help."

"What's in it for me?" Alex asked, not even pausing for a _second_. I was starting to notice that everything seemed transactional with him—to get anything, I had to give up something in return.

"Two thousand dollars," I replied almost as quickly, the idea going straight from my head to my mouth. I hadn't even remembered the lunchbox full of cash from the Undersiders was still in my backpack under my costume until just now, nor did I consider haggling or making a lower offer. The dirty money was a problem that had been weighing on my conscience, and here was another problem I could use it to solve. An elegant solution, for something I'd just come up with on the spot.

Alex blinked in surprise, but then furrowed his brow skeptically. "Why should I believe a rookie kid like you can actually pay that? I'm not going to accept a fucking IOU."

"I have it on my person right now," I said smoothly, getting back into the rhythm of things. I didn't exactly feel confident, but now Alex was on the conversational back foot instead of me. "The Undersiders gave it to me as a first installment for joining them."

"Show me. Carefully," said Alex, his expression guarded yet undeniably greedy.

I reached over to my backpack and opened it, withdrawing the Alexandria lunchbox, suddenly feeling incredibly embarrassed by the juvenile superhero branding. Making sure nobody could see, I hid it from outside view with my body and cracked open the lunchbox so that only Alex had the angle to see what was inside.

Alex nodded once, decisively. "Put it away. I've seen enough."

"Well?" I prompted.

Alex laced his fingers together and put his hands on the table, leaning forward. "Now, you have my attention. You haven't sealed any deal, but you've piqued my interest enough to start a conversation."

I smiled. _Finally,_ something had gone my way.

"So, this is the situation," I began. "The Undersiders want to make nice with you, too, but if I contact them to accept their offer and mention I also happened to run into you along the way, I think we might be able to meet them together and bust them."

Alex gave a low whistle. "I stand corrected. You're not just crazy, you're in _so_ far over your head, you don't know which way is up. First off, don't go giving me blackmail material and then tell me there's another group that can easily outbid you for my services. If I wasn't opposed to dealing with villains, that would have been game over for you right there. Second, your trap won't work. There's _no_ way they'd trust such an obvious setup."

I frowned at him, chagrined. "How on earth would you know? You don't even have any memories, but I've seen their real faces, I even know their names!"

Alex shot me an angry look, and I had the sickening realization that I'd just callously thrown his amnesia back in his face, not even realizing he might be sensitive about it. God, what was _wrong_ with me today? That was something _Emma_ might do.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you," I amended quickly.

Alex narrowed his eyes. "If you went to Parahumans Online to learn about the local powers-that-be like I did, then you should have already seen the problem with your plan. The Undersiders have a Thinker on their team, Tattletale. You don't need to know exactly _what_ her power is to know that attempting any subterfuge whatsoever is a sucker's bet. That is, unless you have a Stranger power I don't know about."

"Look, they all mistook me for a villain in the _first_ place, so clearly her power's not equipped to out me as a hero," I reasoned.

Alex shook his head. "The longer you spend around them, the more likely you are to twig something to her power. Even if you do everything perfectly, which _isn't_ going to happen, it could just be a matter of time. You have no idea what might set it off, if it hasn't been already."

I slumped a bit in my seat, feeling haggard. "Okay, I get it, you have a point. I'm running on _very_ little sleep, you know, and the last few days have just been me getting myself in mortal danger and reacting to a bunch of things that are entirely new to me. I admit I could use a little help brainstorming better ideas."

"I'd offer to use my powers to bust the Undersiders and their boss, but even explaining _how_ I'd do that is a secret that's worth more to me than two grand." Alex said, his mouth quirking up slightly at the corner.

"So what _are_ you willing to help with for two grand?" I asked resignedly.

"Consultation." Alex said, giving me a pleasant grin that rang entirely false.

"No way," I said flatly. "I know a grift when I see one. You've got to put in actual work if you want to see a cent."

Alex cocked his head, his smile growing smug and sharp. "Oh? I'd argue knowledge is a lot more valuable than that. For example, the knowledge that you have two thousand dollars on your person. You would have done better to leave and simply send me a picture online to prove you had the money, rather than showing me you had all of it right now. I could easily follow you out of here and take the rest by force."

I involuntarily went rigid. Not just at the mistake I hadn't even considered, but at the toneless, matter-of-fact way Alex described following and mugging me. I was suddenly _keenly_ aware that this was the same guy who'd kicked Lung onto the second story of a building, and he was within arm's reach. I had to refocus to stop my power, as the buzzing at the edge of my awareness was trying to encroach on him.

Alex continued, oblivious to my inner struggle. "And since we've established that the knowledge you freely gave out is already worth two thousand dollars, it falls on _you_ to make me a better offer. Are you starting to see the value of my advice now? I _could_ have just stayed quiet and let you make that mistake, you know."

My panic receded, replaced by relief and indignation in equal measure. Before I could censor myself, I blurted out, "Did you have to choose the most dickish _possible_ way of making your point, short of actually robbing me?"

Alex only gave a single chuckle in response.

"Showing you was really a spur-of-the-moment idea. Next time I'll have a plan when I'm going into a negotiation with another parahuman." I said peevishly.

Alex waved a hand dismissively. "I doubt it, but you'll learn from your mistakes eventually. _If_ you survive that long. Are you more willing to pay for my consultation or not?"

"I take your point. Two heads are definitely better than one," I said grudgingly. "Still, I want something concrete. I want actual _support_ if I'm paying this much. You're a really strong Brute and an incredibly fast regenerator, it can't be _that_ much trouble for you to lend me some backup."

Alex stood from the booth and looked down on me. "Flattery will get you nowhere, kid. Last time I supported you in a fight, I got my face melted off and a building collapsed on me. Sure, I'm fine _now,_ but the pay's not nearly good enough for me to go through that shit a second time."

"I'm not even asking you to fight anyone for sure," I said quickly as he turned to leave. "I just want you on standby as insurance in case I get attacked and I can't handle it by myself. Just be on call for one week, that's all I ask. If I get in trouble I might ask you to escort me to the heroes, who can take over from there. That's all. You won't even have to _do_ anything unless things go wrong. I'll even throw in a favor on top of the payment."

Alex turned around, gave me a considering look, and sat back down. "All right, I'm listening. What's this favor worth to me, exactly?"

"It... I guess it would only be fair if I offered some backup to you," I said haltingly. "For one week, or seven days, I'll help you out using my powers."

"That's more like it," said Alex. "But it's still not a fair trade-off. You have a whole roster of potential enemies I might need to help you fight off, but I don't see any likely scenario where I'll need _you_ to get _me_ out of trouble."

"Not necessarily," I argued. "What about Lung and the ABB? Armsmaster warned me they might try to get revenge on any of us—you, me, or the Undersiders."

Alex inclined his head. "Fair point, but even so, I still think you're vastly more likely to land in trouble than me. What else have you got?"

I tried to come up with something else, but ended up just exhaling sharply through my nose in a suppressed sigh. "Do you have a counteroffer?" I asked.

Alex drummed his fingers on the table, considering for a few moments before speaking. "How about this: I get the two thousand dollars, I get seven days of your services, I get a veto on any of your plans involving me, and you don't go getting yourself involved in any secret agent nonsense I'll have to bail you out of. Lastly, I'll only help you out against criminals. That means if the cops or heroes try to arrest you for any of this vigilante shit, then I'm gone."

I frowned. "I'm not a vigilante, I'm a hero."

Alex rolled his eyes. "Whatever."

I considered it. It seemed like a long list, but I couldn't really object to his refusal to fight cops and heroes, nor could I say no to his veto if I was asking him to risk himself on my behalf. I couldn't just let him get _everything_ he wanted, though, or else this would be an unconditional surrender, not a compromise.

"One thing," I said, holding up a finger. "You get the first thousand up front, and the second thousand after the week is up."

Alex flashed me a wintry smile. "Hm. And here I thought you were just going to trust me to hold up my end of the bargain, but I guess I can't complain. All right, it sounds like we have a deal."

I held my hand out to shake, feeling a little silly for doing so, but after a moment's hesitation, he took it. I noticed his hand was feverish, almost uncomfortably warm, before he perfunctorily pumped my hand once and released it.

Keeping an eye out for observers, I turned and opened the lunchbox inside the backpack, and passed four of the two hundred fifty dollar stacks of bills to Alex in an embarrassingly literal embodiment of the old saying of 'paying someone under the table.' Alex didn't comment on the absurdity, just examined the money to make sure it was all there and tucked it into his inner jacket pocket.

"Don't make this a mistake on my part, Taylor. Now, is there any other detail of your plans we need to discuss?" Alex asked.

Alex's use of my name reminded me of something I'd been thinking about earlier. "Not really related to my plans, per se, but it's awkward trying not to use your name in public. It would help if I had something to call your parahuman identity aside from 'the Case 53,' and Regent said he wanted to make the name 'Zombie' stick, which I'm guessing you don't want. Did you come up with a cape name yet?"

Alex chuckled. "No, I haven't. Didn't think I'd need one. Zombie, though, that's funny. It's actually kind of _apropos_. No matter how many times Lung tried to kill me, I kept coming back. In fact, when I first woke up, all the evidence pointed to me being shot to death, but apparently it didn't take. Might be how I got these powers in the first place."

I grimaced. "Still, I don't want to have to call you Zombie, it just seems... kind of gross. What about some other names of things that come back from the dead? Uh, Lazarus? Vampire? Revenant? I'm not sure what might be taken already—"

"I couldn't _possibly_ give less of a shit if the name is taken," Alex scoffed. "I like Revenant, use that."

I nodded. "Okay, then. Revenant it is. I'll contact you over PHO if I find anything important, or if there's some other emergency I think you could help with. I'm not expecting you to shadow me or anything, but if you could stay mostly around the Docks, and if you buy a burner phone with that money, you'd be quicker to respond if I get in trouble. You might also want to get a costume to help hide your identity."

Alex looked like he'd just bitten into something bitter. "Ugh. Goddamn it, I guess the costume thing is unavoidable, isn't it? Whatever. It doesn't matter, I'll come up with something better than that cringeworthy crap most capes run around in. And don't worry about me leaving. I had planned to stick around the Docks anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem. But there is one other thing I want to know. If you could just explain the full extent of your powers, that'll let me know what kind of asset you'd be."

I was about to answer, but stopped myself when I saw the pleasantly neutral poker face he was wearing. It made me instantly suspicious this was a trap.

I stood from the booth, shouldering my backpack, and I recalled all of the ingrained strategies and tactics I'd honed for dealing with Emma, Madison, and Sophia's bullying campaign. "You know, I _am_ able to remember a lesson for longer than five seconds. I'm going to take a bus that you aren't riding so you can't follow me and rob me blind, then I'm going to hide the rest of the money. _Then_ I'm going to think about what I should or shouldn't share about my powers, so you can't use those secrets to blackmail me, and after that I'll contact you—not in person, so you can't force me to agree to anything—and then we can set up a _fair trade_ for information about our powers."

Alex gave me a sardonic little smirk. "Ah, so she _can_ learn after all. Good. But I don't like the idea of discussing that electronically. I don't trust _any_ electronic communications, really."

"What do you want to do instead? Meet somewhere to discuss it?" I asked suspiciously.

"No. I'll pick up a phone and message you the number, we can make that work, but whenever you talk or text over the phone, _be vague._ Don't say anything you wouldn't say in front of a potential enemy. Hell, don't say anything you wouldn't say in front of a _friend_. Try to make it almost impossible to tell what you're talking about. Avoid words and terms that might flag a database. Oh, and delete everything after." Alex warned.

I nodded. "Got it. Don't let on what we're talking about, delete everything after. That sounds like a chore, but I've done cyphers before, so think I can manage a bit of sneaky allusion. See you around, Alex."

He lifted a hand in farewell. "Trust no one, kid, and maybe you'll live to see tomorrow."

Maybe it was my imagination or I was just starting to get used to Alex's abrasive personality, but that incredibly ominous and cynical advice _almost_ came off as friendly. Then again, maybe he was just in a good mood because he'd gotten me to agree to a deal with terms so lopsided it bordered on signing away my firstborn.

I really couldn't hold it against him, though. After all, I had to remember that Alex was a lone rogue Case 53 with _literally_ nothing and no one to fall back on. He had to grasp and claw for every advantage he could get, it was a matter of simple survival for him. Now I almost felt guilty for thinking of him as a skinflint, even though he totally was one. And wasn't it better that he work with me, instead of letting him fall into a bad crowd like the Empire Eighty-Eight or the Merchants?

As I left the library, I pulled out the burner phone Brian had given me and called the first number programmed into it.

The phone rang twice before a chirpy female voice answered, "Well, well, if it isn't our friend from yesterday! You got back to us after all, I'm touched. Shame it isn't good news, huh?"

I hadn't yet said a single word, but despite that Tattletale had somehow figured out that I was going to say no? I was suddenly _very_ relieved that Alex had talked me out of trying to infiltrate her team.

"I, uh, wanted to thank you for the offer, but I'm going to be working with someone else for the time being. Our, um, mutual friend from the other day." I explained.

"I really am sorry to hear that," said Tattletale, managing to sound genuinely disappointed. I felt a little pang of loss in my stomach at that, as nonsensical as it was.

"For what it's worth, I'm glad we got to work together at least once," I said tentatively.

"Well, we hope you both still count us among your friends. Let your colleague know that we appreciate his help earlier and that we'll have his gift ready for him the next time we expect to see him." said Tattletale.

"I will," I said, wondering if such an amicable meeting would ever happen.

"One last thing before you go," Tattletale said quickly. "Just between us girls—I knew you were never _really_ on our side, even though I was hoping we might tempt you otherwise."

A chill ran across my whole body.

"I hope you understand what we do is all in good fun. It would be a lot _less_ fun if you took things too far, you understand? We put our confidence in you, and we expect you to return the favor. Even the professionals and pencil-pushers don't step over certain lines, you know. I'd much prefer to play fair and square, but if you force our hand, we can _and will_ retaliate in kind." said Tattletale, her voice going from sweet and kindly to cold and hard on the last sentence.

I was pretty sure I'd picked up the subtext correctly, and it terrified me. Tattletale was threatening me if I used their names and faces against them. They'd come after my civilian life if I did that. The very thought made my blood turn to ice.

"I understand," I said woodenly. "I'd hate it if things got too personal."

"Sounds like we're on the same page then," Tattletale said with much more warmth, though not quite as saccharine as before. "Those are the rules, you know, and they're what keeps the world spinning. So long as we're on the same page with that, may the best team win. Ta-ta!"

Tattletale hung up before I could get a word in. I slowly put the phone away.

Well, that was harrowing. Two down, one to go. Hopefully things would go better with Armsmaster. My revised plan was to meet him, but instead of giving the Undersiders' names and descriptions, I'd give up the info that they had a mysterious boss. That had to be worth _something,_ at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the ever-charming Alex Mercer flexes his intellectual superiority on a fifteen-year-old girl. Stay classy, Alex.
> 
> To those who predicted Taylor and Alex would be allies, congratulations! You now get to say the four most satisfying words in the English language, "I told you so!" This limited partnership is off to quite a rocky start, though, so no telling how things might change in the future. Thanks to everyone who left a review, it really helps me gauge what the audience's expectations are!


	13. Infection 2.4

**Infection 2.4**

Alex was on his way to the pet store to do some animal experimentation, and on balance, he was having a _very_ good day.

In the course of a single conversation, Alex had secured an advance of a thousand dollars and, more importantly, seven days of a parahuman's services. He didn't know the extent of Taylor's abilities, but once he did, he was sure he could think of a way to make use of her. Likewise, Alex needed to understand both the mechanism and limitations of his own power in order to fully utilize it.

After the Gullible Girl Wonder had left the library café with Alex's empty promises of emergency backup, he'd decided to do more power experimentation. He did a little more research and quick checks to firm up some of the experiments he wanted to conduct and the materials he'd need, then made change at the library café after getting another snack and caught a bus to one of the nicer commercial districts at the Boardwalk. The general feel of the Boardwalk was quite unique, like a mix between an open market bazaar and a bougie boutique.

It took ten minutes to detour to an electronics store and pick up a burner phone with a slide-out keyboard and rudimentary internet access. After that, Alex sent Taylor his new phone number over PHO and continued on his way to the pet store.

Alex's working hypothesis was that his power was partially mechanical and partially genetic in nature. Kenta's tattoos, for instance, were just ink pigments in his skin. They weren't a part of his genetics, and shouldn't have been copied over if all Alex was doing was simply creating a clone of Kenta from his DNA. Despite that, Alex could easily recreate them, and he had no problems creating a facsimile of clothes as well, despite those obviously lacking any sort of genetic blueprint.

Whatever the case may be, his power did work on the scale of relatively small molecules like pigments, so it wasn't out of the question that the copying or archiving mechanism involved the comparatively massive molecule that was DNA as well.

Alex had already confirmed he could mix and match different templates together in the library bathroom, where he'd used one of the stalls to quickly shapeshift into a new hybrid template of Marcus and Kenneth that used all the most boring, nondescript features of both of them. He'd done that so he could use the new template as a quick, anonymous disguise. However, the real value of the hybrid template was that it proved he could do more than simply change a template's color.

To that end, Alex had already used the few other templates available to him. The rat and Lung's partially transformed body both had senses far beyond the human norm—olfactory and auditory, respectively. With some trial and error, Alex had successfully integrated those senses into his default form, but it had required tweaking his neural structures as well in order to process his new sensory data. He was much less squeamish about fiddling with his brain now that he knew the changes didn't have to be permanent, and that his consciousness could just retreat into his body.

Having incredibly good smell and hearing was still a bit overwhelming, even after two hours of acclimation. The problem was, Alex could only focus on so many of those details at a time. Even as he was just walking down the street, though, he was slowly adapting to the deluge of new information. Unfortunately, that came with the now-omnipresent primal urge to grab the nearest person and _bite down,_ despite the fact that he was almost completely whole at this point. It was mostly just annoying as hell.

Regardless of that irritation, the important thing was that his hybrid senses had _worked_. That was why Alex was going to the pet store to acquire new templates. The idea of stealing various animal abilities and forms seemed far-fetched, even to him, but he'd never forgive himself if he passed up the opportunity.

Five blocks from the electronics store, Alex found his destination. As he approached, though, he started to reconsider his decision not to go to a big chain pet store.

The faded red sign stenciled over the wide, cluttered shop window read 'Scales and Feathers,' and it was a rather unimpressive edifice despite the several effusive internet reviews Alex had seen. He pushed open the glass door and entered the warm, humid shop, which was filled with the chittering of birds and a truly prodigious quantity of new smells, most of them musty and organic, but also many sharp and chemical. To the right was the counter with the cash register, where a blonde woman was completing a purchase of some bottles with a stout employee, and to the left was a labyrinth of various pieces of merchandise, bird cages, and terrariums.

True to its name, Scales and Feathers seemed to cater mostly to bird and reptile owners. The only mammals in evidence were a few kinds of rodents, and Alex suspected they were there mostly for the reptiles' benefit.

Alex spotted what he was looking for in the back of the shop, straight ahead—the freshwater aquarium section. He walked towards the wall with five stacked rows of glowing fish tanks, and scanned them. Each subdivided cell within the rows was gorgeously landscaped with a variety of vibrant aquatic mosses and plants, with volcanic rock and driftwood accents, but Alex didn't care. He was looking for something very specific.

He was there for _Apteronotus albifrons,_ the Black Ghost Knifefish.

Alex's logic was simple. In the animal kingdom, there were senses and abilities that human beings simply lacked, and one of the most interesting of those was bioelectricity, most famously utilized by the electric eel. That mere fish was able to produce absurd amounts of electricity, enough to stun or kill a caiman.

For exceedingly obvious reasons, electric eels were not sold as pets, but a much smaller close relative of the electric eel _was_ popular as a pet—the knifefish. Alex had somehow known that despite doing no research into the subject beforehand. Maybe he'd owned an aquarium in his pre-amnesia life? Despite this information having no real source that he knew of, lo and behold, after a quick internet search, it turned out that the two fish were indeed related, and that a few local pet shops sold knifefish.

As Alex searched the fish tanks, he heard someone approaching behind him and turned around.

The sole employee in evidence was one of the weirdest-looking people Alex had ever seen, aside from those with birth defects. He was a fifty-something white guy whose skin was tanned to a leathery brown, and he was proportioned like a fantasy dwarf that just happened to be a bit over six feet tall. He had no beard, though, and instead sported an atrocious silver combover. His name tag read Barry, and he was looking at Alex with a warm smile.

"Hello, hello! Welcome to my shop! Are you looking for something in particular?" asked Barry. Surprisingly, he had a SoCal accent, rather than the nasal New Englander accent of the locals, which made him seem like Santa Claus's surfer dude brother.

Alex stifled a laugh at the thought and nodded. "You have knifefish in stock?"

Barry bobbed his head. "Sure do, sure do! Black ghost knifefish, right over here," he said, pointing to the lowest row of tanks at the end of the aisle.

In the lower tanks, there were a few cells with various other fish species and a single knifefish apiece. The things didn't look like much. They were about four or five inches long, and mostly a matte black with a pair of white rings on the ends of their tails. They were shaped like a chef's knife, unsurprisingly, tapering to a sharp point at the tail. They didn't have conventional fins like other fish, instead having only a pair of round pelvic fins near its head and one long, billowing skirt of a fin on their underside that they used to move around.

"Impressive, aren't they?" Barry said proudly, completely misreading Alex's nonplussed expression.

"Kind of small," Alex commented.

"Keep 'em healthy and they'll grow to be as big as your forearm," Barry replied, holding his hands out a bit less than two feet apart. "You want to buy 'em little so you can train them. Get them more accustomed to people."

At Alex's skeptical look, he continued. "You can tame and train knifefish by hand. They're a fish you can actually get to _pet_. Helps when they get big, otherwise they're too shy to interact with people."

"Sounds good," Alex said breezily. "I'll take one."

"They're best in tanks of at least a hundred and fifty gallons," Barry warned, adopting the scolding pose and tone reminiscent of a schoolmarm.

"That's fine, my two hundred gallon tank is already set up," Alex lied. "First I want to see if one will get along well with my other fish, then I'll get some more in a few weeks."

Barry pursed his lips, but then he nodded. "All right, then. I'll bag one up for you."

Alex was puzzled by the pet shop owner's apparently genuine concern, and struggled to keep his disdain from showing on his face. Was Barry _really_ going to deny himself a sale if he thought the purchaser's aquarium wasn't up to snuff? What, did they have a return policy for dead fish or something? They had to, since Alex couldn't even imagine anyone past the mental age of eight actually _caring_ about what happened to a goddamned fish.

Barry reached into the tank with his enormous, leathery paw of a hand and deftly separated one of the fish from the rest, gently herding it towards a clear plastic container lined with a bag that he held in his other hand.

"Come on, come on. You're all right," Barry gently cooed to the fish, which obligingly backed into the container. Alex stared in discomfited incredulity at the sight of the huge man speaking to the fish like it was a frightened toddler.

"So, what kind of pH balance do you have?" Barry addressed Alex.

"I keep it at seven," Alex said, hoping that the neutral figure would placate the clearly batshit pet shop owner.

"That's good, that's good, you want to keep it within the range of six to eight," Barry said, pulling out the container and expertly tying off the plastic bag with a rubber band. "Have you got many hiding places for your fish to use? They like having cover."

"Yeah, I've got plenty of plants and driftwood," Alex said. He wouldn't have minded getting more fish care paraphernalia just to avoid this unbearably awkward inquisition, but these fish were fucking _expensive_ little bastards, and he didn't feel like unnecessarily blowing a bunch of money.

Hell, maybe that's what the pet shop owner was after— trying to guilt-trip Alex into buying more merchandise. Not that such a sales tactic would work anyway, when Alex's real goal was to consume the fish, not pamper it.

"So, what do I owe you?" asked Alex, hoping to change the subject.

"Let's see," said Barry, going to the cash register to begin ringing up the fish. Next to the register, a cockatoo was hanging sideways from a rope in a cage, leering at Alex with its beady black eyes as it swung back and forth before giving him an absolutely _ear-piercing_ screech that pained Alex's newly-enhanced hearing. Alex shot the bird a death glare, which he quickly replaced with a tight, fake smile as Barry turned to face him, having finished ringing up the fish. "That'll be twenty-seven forty, with tax."

Alex inwardly groaned. He could hardly believe he was paying over 1% of his total net worth for a single pet fish, but he handed over a twenty and a ten, accepted his change, and left the pet shop plus one knifefish.

Alex went two blocks further inland and detoured to one of the city's ubiquitous abandoned alleys. Once he was alone, he held up the incongruous tropical fish sitting placidly in its bag.

Alex had to admit, up close it was a pretty damn cool-looking fish. It had very elegant proportions, and its head looked more like it belonged to a baby dinosaur than a fish. There were worse things he could be integrating into his being, he supposed.

Alex tore away the bag, splashing the warm water on himself. He firmly grasped the slippery, struggling fish, and his hand came apart into black tendrils that absorbed it in the blink of an eye.

The thing 'tasted' even worse than the rat, but Alex could feel the template of it. To his surprise, he even got a few vague impressions, memories, and feelings from the fish's primitive mind, though nothing like human emotions or coherent thoughts. Alex wasn't quite sure what else he'd been expecting—after all, fish were vertebrates, so it wasn't like they were all that different from rats or humans, just a great deal simpler.

Maybe Barry _hadn't_ just been bullshitting Alex about the fish's intelligence. Go figure.

Now, for the important part. Alex tried to isolate the components of the fish responsible for its electrical generation and senses, using the fish's own instincts as a sort of guide. It was actually _very_ difficult, like being blindfolded and trying to find a needle in a haystack by taste. After a few minutes of trial and error, shapeshifting his arms while they were hidden under his shirtsleeves, Alex found something that seemed new.

Alex concentrated the new template into his arms and the skin of his hands, and to his pleasant surprise, he actually _did_ feel something different, and he realized it was the electricity in his body and immediate surroundings.

The sensation was familiar to the fish, but Alex had never felt the _subtleties_ of electricity before. There was no way for him to adequately describe it. It was tactile, but not entirely. There were elements like hearing and sight as well, which gave it more dimensionality than any tactile feeling could replicate.

Unfortunately, the sensations were fuzzy at best, and their range was limited to only a few inches from Alex's skin. He'd expected that, since air was a poor conductor compared to water, but it was still a bit disappointing. With some refinement, Alex might be able to turn it into something resembling a sixth sense to sharpen his reflexes, but if he wanted to develop something truly like sightless vision, he'd probably need to consume a bat or something else that echolocates.

Alex was so captivated by the new sense, he nearly forgot that his primary goal was to weaponize this. The electric eel was already powerful, so scaling it up to a parahuman-sized application might turn out _very_ impressive indeed. Alex wouldn't exactly be throwing lightning around like Emperor Palpatine, but he could think of all sorts of combat applications for a touch-based current with potentially thousands of volts and dozens of amps.

After a few more minutes of playing around with his new sense, Alex concentrated on the electricity-producing aspect of the knifefish's biology, and lined his entire arms with that structure. It involved a wildly disproportionate amount of shifting around his body's internal matter, for some reason. It felt like it was concentrating _something_ in his arms, though he wasn't quite sure what it was. Ions, perhaps? The effort left him feeling a bit overheated.

Alex laid his hands against a metal downspout and sent the signal for the electrical pulse, and a moment later, he was lanced with white-hot agony. The current lasted only an instant, but Alex's entire form felt rigidly locked in place for a few seconds. When it ended, Alex staggered away, muscles spasming and twitching.

Burning with embarrassment, and maybe some _actual_ burns, Alex steadied himself again.

Apparently, electric fish did _not_ magically possess immunity to their own powerful shocks, and Alex's body was a much better electrical conductor than he'd realized.

 _Note to self: when experimenting with new structures, start small and then scale up,_ Alex thought to himself.

Alex seemed to be just as susceptible to electricity as any normal human, at least for the first few moments. If nothing else, that relative weakness was _very_ good to know. In the future, he'd have to avoid police tasers and electricity-based capes.

All in all, despite the painful lesson at the end, the experiment as a whole seemed to be a smashing success. Alex clearly wasn't going to be able to replicate the offensive abilities of an electric eel in any practical way, but the important part was that he now knew he _could_ modify and integrate even an animal's physical structures and abilities.

Even though his idea of turning himself into a living taser didn't work out the way he wanted, that didn't mean he wouldn't be able to try other things, such as producing venom, growing wings, or echolocation. There were _so many_ things he could incorporate to give him an edge, it made him feel almost giddy at the prospect.

The success of experiment one meant experiment two was cleared to commence.

Alex's second destination was the dog pound. If he could consume a dog and take its form, it could prove to be the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card if he was pursued and cornered somewhere. Turning into someone else was all well and good, but people still invited questions and detainment, but no pursuer in their right mind would suspect an innocent dog. They would think Alex had made his escape long before anyone would guess he was able to transform into an animal. Moreover, a 'stray' dog could prove the ideal disguise for scouting out locations without drawing undue attention to himself.

If Alex was being honest, he had gotten that particular idea from the old John Carpenter movie, _The Thing._ It wasn't exactly dignified or wise for Alex to crib ideas from Hollywood, but this particular strategy seemed good on its own merits. The only problem was that the movie's fame might lead others to the same conclusion, but Alex had already planned on preserving his advantage by hiding the fact he was a shapeshifter anyway. That secret was second only to his cannibalism, as far as he was concerned.

In the interests of that secrecy, Alex made sure to duck out of sight and adopt his new Blandest White Guy disguise before reaching the pound. He didn't want anyone finding his liquid doggy leftovers and connecting that to his murders, especially if there were cameras around to record his face.

The Lord Street Animal Shelter was not, in fact, on Lord Street, but it was close enough to take the name, evidently. It was one of several shelters in the city, and clearly among the more upscale organizations, as befitting its proximity to the more well-to-do parts of town. The parking lot was bracketed by two little spits of landscaped bushes and trees that were actually quite well-tended, and the building generally looked a lot cleaner and less depressing than its cinderblock construction and jail-like architecture would suggest.

Alex walked into the building, and his enhanced nose was immediately assaulted by the lemon-scented floor cleaner that tried and failed to mask the musk of dogs. Alex sniffed and made a beeline to the reception desk, which was manned by a willowy young black woman wearing veterinary scrubs.

"Hello, can I help you?" the woman asked. Maybe Alex was just imagining it, but he thought he saw a flash of hostility or skepticism in the way she looked at him. Alex suddenly felt keenly aware that, for all intents and purposes, he was dressed _exactly_ like an Empire Eighty-Eight member, sans tattoos and hair dye.

For a moment, Alex considered leaving and coming back with a different face and outfit, but a second later, he decided _fuck that_. The goddamn Nazis didn't have a monopoly on good taste and aesthetics.

With deliberate intent and focus, Alex discarded his usual hostile bearing and put on an air of polite sheepishness. "Yeah, I was wondering if you took walk-ins. I just wanted to see if you had any large dogs up for adoption."

The woman—Michelle, going by her desk's nameplate—gave Alex a forced apologetic smile. "I'm afraid not, Mister...?"

"Thompson, Doctor Kyle Thompson," Alex said, picking one of the random aliases he'd come up with. He wasn't quite sure why he'd impulsively appended the title _doctor,_ though, that hadn't been in the plan.

"You see, Dr. Thompson, adoption isn't just about making sure the dog has its shots and paying the fee, we also need to do a background check, and that can take several days," Michelle explained.

Inwardly, Alex cursed. He should have done more research before coming here, but maybe this was still salvageable. Outwardly, he waved his hand amicably. "Oh, I understand, I just meant I wanted to know if I needed to make an appointment to just see the dogs. I was just walking by, and I only wanted to see if there are any dogs here that fit, you know? I'd come back later to do all the paperwork, if that's the case, and—oh, damn, it only _just_ occurred to me how it must seem for a guy that looks like _me_ to be asking about big dogs. I heard about the dog-fighting problem with the goddamn neo-nazis, but I only moved here from New York a little while ago, so you'll have to excuse my ignorance of the local dynamic." he said, giving a rueful chuckle.

Michelle's smile grew a bit more warm and genuine at Alex's self-effacing show. "Oh no, I didn't mean to imply anything about _you_ particularly, Dr. Thompson. We run background checks on everyone," she assured him. "Why don't you have a seat? It's not busy at all right now, so I can take you back in just a minute."

Alex nodded. That wasn't ideal, but he might be able to get by with just a genetic sample. Alex went over to the row of classroom-style plastic-and-metal chairs and sat down in one, only to be startled when something gave out underneath the flimsy plastic, followed by a sharp _snap_ and a metal _clang_. Alex started to lurch back, and threw his arm out to catch a windowsill and steady himself.

 _"Jesus!"_ Alex yelped in surprise, quickly swinging himself up out of the disintegrating chair using the windowsill for leverage. Sure enough, the plastic of the chair's seat was cracked, and a U-shaped metal fastener had snapped cleanly off the chair at the welding points and fallen to the linoleum floor, making the whole thing splay out its legs drunkenly.

"You all right?" Michelle called out.

"I'm fine, the chair just gave out on me," Alex replied, straightening out his rumpled jacket with a sharp tug.

Michelle frowned in concern. "Sorry about that. I always thought those chairs out there were kinda janky."

"Yeah, on second thought, I think I'll stand," Alex muttered absently, his mind racing.

That hadn't just been a damaged or defective chair. Alex was sure his weight had _broken_ that chair, he could feel the metal bending _way_ too far under him before that part had snapped. For the first time, Alex thought about the Law of Conservation of Mass—and whether it applied to him.

Alex felt like kicking himself. _Of course_ he shouldn't have just assumed he still weighed the same after consuming six people, even though he wasn't _outwardly_ any bigger than he'd been before. He'd just subconsciously assumed that he was like other parahumans who routinely violated or outright ignored physics, like how Lung made fire and flesh appear seemingly out of nowhere with no corresponding input of matter or energy.

Alex was so strong it was no wonder he hadn't even noticed himself getting heavier. Regardless of his good level of fine dexterity, his body felt relatively feather-light at all times. If Alex was still carrying around a significant portion of the weight of all those people...

 _Fuck_. Based on how heavy his victims had been, some quick mental math put the upper limit of how much he might weigh at a mind-boggling _sixteen hundred pounds_. Alex highly doubted he weighed that much, considering how much fluid he wasted during consumption and all the mass that had been burned off or lost, but even if he only weighed a small fraction of that, it still meant his body had an obscenely high density compared to humans.

At least Alex didn't have to add too much more volume to his body in order to be whole. If he'd weighed this much at half capacity instead, he'd probably have been breaking through floorboards at this point in his recovery.

Even so, Alex had the sinking feeling this was going to be one of those body issues that would continue to haunt him. Try as he might, he just couldn't escape the consequences of his gluttony, even though it wasn't reflected on the outside.

"Dr. Thompson, are you ready to see the dogs?" Michelle called out.

Alex turned around to face her, forcing a pleasant smile. "Lead the way."

Michelle looked down at her plastic clipboard as she walked at a brisk pace down a hall lined with various offices and care facilities, Alex following a few steps behind. The muffled sound of the occasional dog barking was growing louder.

"Almost all the dogs here are toy, small, and medium-sized breeds," Michelle explained as she opened a door, and raised her voice over the cacophonous noise that followed. "Not much call for anything bigger than a golden retriever in the city, and the large and giant breeds we do have aren't any good for guarding, so if that's what you're looking for, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place."

"I'm not, I've always just liked them," Alex said, following Michelle into the kennel. It was a long concrete room filled on both sides by chain-link cages and dogs that were all barking or jumping or wagging their tails excitedly.

"I've had big dogs since I was a kid, so it's—" Alex's lie was interrupted by the nearest dogs' excited barking turning into absolutely _deafening_ shrieks of rage and terror, which in turn set off all the other dogs.

"What the hell?!" Alex said, and couldn't even hear himself say it beyond the vibrations in his throat. He clapped his hands over his sensitive ears, which barely helped.

Michelle looked taken aback, but quickly recovered, shooting Alex a look and gesturing for him to go back into the hall. He did, and she hurriedly shut the door behind them, which only reduced the noise level to below painful.

"What was _that_ about?" Alex asked once they were far enough away to hear each other, though he already suspected the answer.

"Sometimes a dog just doesn't like the look or smell of a particular person," Michelle said apologetically. "Sometimes it's men, sometimes it's people who wear hats, you never know what can set them off. I've never seen _that_ bad of chain reaction, though."

"Lucky me, I guess," Alex said in irritation. He had a feeling the dogs could somehow sense he wasn't human, and the dissonance was freaking them out.

Michelle gave Alex a considering look. "There's an easy way to get around that. There's only three large-breed dogs currently up for adoption, I can bring them out to one of the rooms we have for dogs and people to get to know each other. I have their files here, if you have a preference."

Alex took a look at the options on her clipboard. The first was a female Saint Bernard, which he rejected immediately on the grounds of his dignity. The second was a Husky that was too small, but the third was much more promising, a male mutt named Charlie. The surprisingly well-staged photo featured a stocky and predominantly black dog, with upright triangular ears, a white chest, and a few white face markings. His breed was listed as 'Alaskan Malamute mix.' Alex's eyebrows lifted at his weight, which was listed at a healthy 165 pounds.

"This one doesn't look much like a Malamute. What else is he? Grizzly? Clydesdale? Mammoth?" Alex asked bemusedly.

"Well, to be perfectly honest, his dad was a Newfoundland, so we just listed his mom's breed instead. After what happened to the island, you know, people got all morbid and superstitious about the breed..." Michelle trailed off, shaking her head in disgust.

"That's absolutely pathetic," Alex said flatly, letting a hint of his true feelings show. "I'd like to see him, first."

Michelle quirked an eyebrow at him with a knowing smile. "Not even going to look at the last one, huh? All right, if you'll just head into that room over there, I'll be right back."

Alex went into the small, tan room as she asked, which was almost completely featureless save for a weird beige-carpeted ledge set at bench-height on the left, a metal loop set into the far wall next to the door, and a few balls and chew toys scattered on the linoleum floor. A minute later, Michelle returned, holding the leash of the enormous wooly dog, which was gazing up at her adoringly with his tongue lolling out.

Alex resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the sappy display. He would have _vastly_ preferred something dignified and badass like a wolfdog or German Shepherd, but this form might also have its advantages. No one in their right mind would feel threatened by this overgrown furball. At worst, some fool might try to _pet_ Alex, but that would just give him an opportunity to bite off a snack and get away scott-free. The idea held a certain appeal.

Alex crouched down, and smiled without showing any teeth. People generally treated dogs like children, so Alex tried to play along, injecting eagerness into his voice. "Hi there, Charlie!"

At first the dog seemed only mildly interested in Alex, but that changed the moment he seemed to catch Alex's scent. The dog let out a low growl that turned into a whine at the end.

"Charlie, _behave,"_ Michelle admonished him. Alex wondered if she thought the dog actually understood her.

Alex patiently held out the back of his hand for the dog to smell.

The dog wasn't having any of it, though. He whined again and tugged on the leash hard enough that Michelle had to brace herself to stop from falling over.

"I'm sorry, this is _very_ unlike him," Michelle said as she struggled to keep the dog from dragging her out the door.

"It's fine," Alex said calmly. "Why don't you leave him in here with me for a while, we'll see if he acclimates to me."

"I'm not supposed to leave anyone alone with a dog, and Charlie really isn't acting like himself. I don't want either of you to get hurt," Michelle said skeptically.

"You can secure his leash to that loop there, right? I just want to wait and sit here quietly. I've handled many big dogs before, and I won't make any sudden moves or even get near him, I promise," Alex said, holding up his right hand.

Michelle wavered, then nodded. "All right. Come get me at my desk when you're done, take as much time as you need."

Michelle tugged the dog over to the wall, which was more a matter of the dog's paws lacking traction on the waxed floor rather than her being stronger than him. She ensured that the leash was secure to the loop, which let the dog move in a radius that only covered about half the room, then she left.

Alex watched her go out of sight from the narrow window set into the door. He was all alone.

Alex looked back at the dog, which was warily watching Alex, clearly torn between wanting to look intimidating and being completely terrified of him. Alex didn't care about this bland disguise, so he could easily get away with consuming the dog and ditching this place out the back exit.

But still...

 _"Ugh_. I wish he wouldn't look at me like that." Alex muttered to himself. The stupid dog was bringing back memories of Kenneth's big border collie, which was similarly colored. Kenneth had _loved_ that damn dog, more than Lung had loved any three people put together, including his own mother.

Alex sighed and stared exasperatedly up at the ceiling. _"Fuck."_

He bent down again, trying not to look imposing. "All right, mutt. We can do this the easy way, or the hard way," Alex said to the dog, then blinked a few times and shook his head. "Wait, why am I talking to a _fucking_ animal? Christ, the craziness of these people must be catching."

Bit by bit, Alex moved closer to the dog, until he was within the leash's radius. The dog backed up, issuing another growl as its hackles rose.

Alex just stopped there, waiting.

The dog made a sound halfway between a groan and a whine, then _woofed_ at him. Slowly, tentatively, the dog moved closer to investigate Alex.

"There we go," Alex said in a low, even tone.

The dog flinched back a little when Alex carefully moved his hand to rest it on the dog's flank, but didn't move back any further. Alex gave the dog a perfunctory stroke, lifting a small clump of loose fur with his hand as he did so. Consuming the fur did give him a new flavor to work with, albeit not a physical template, so it would have to do for now.

Alex had wanted to test creating a physical template out of a purely genetic template anyway. Two birds, one stone.

Alex pulled back and briskly walked out of the room and into the front entrance. Michelle looked up from her desk in surprise. "Out already? Is something wrong?"

"Sorry, I guess a dog just isn't in the cards for me," said Alex with a hint of irony, not even bothering to look at Michelle as he pushed open the glass door to leave.

Alex went to the nearest bus stop and traveled into the industrial husk of the city. Once he was standing in the empty ruins of a boarded-up warehouse that he'd broken into from the ceiling, and was sure that he wouldn't be spied on or interrupted, he finally tried shapeshifting into his new dog form.

The change was a great deal slower. Alex's power couldn't do it automatically as normal, requiring a great deal of mental focus on his part to make sure the details were right. Teeth position, fur length, and countless other details weren't accessible from just DNA alone, requiring Alex to input them manually, for lack of a better descriptor. It was a mixed blessing that while in the middle of shapeshifting, he was a mass of deaf and blind tendrils, which at least cut out other distractions and allowed him to focus.

Sightless, soundless minutes ticked by. Alex would never have left himself so vulnerable for so long had he not been absolutely certain of his privacy, but he persisted in his task. The hardest part was preserving and integrating critical parts of his human brain into the much smaller and differently-shaped dog brain, as a safety measure to keep some part of his human mind safe just in case the weird parallel mosaic perspective he used while puppeteering a simulacrum made a catastrophic mistake and got lost in dog-mode.

At last, Alex settled from a roughly dog-shaped mass of tendrils into a fully formed dog. If he hadn't just spent the last few minutes being amorphous, the experience of having a _tail_ would have blown his mind in and of itself. As it stood, though, by far the weirdest things were his _limbs_.

Alex had all the same bones and joints in his arms and legs as he did before, but now he'd gone from a plantigrade biped to a digitigrade quadruped, and as such the proportions of his limbs were all _wildly_ mixed up, which clashed horribly with his human-adapted mind. He felt _beyond_ clumsy, as if it was taking every bit of his concentration just to stand still and relatively upright without falling over.

By comparison, the fact that his face had stretched out into a muzzle and his ears were now fully mobile barely rated as odd. Also, dog vision _sucked ass_. Sure, Alex's field of vision was much wider than before, but he couldn't see the color red at all, nor could he really make out any details past twenty feet or so.

Alex gave a mental sigh and reworked the dog template again, this time incorporating several tweaks to the nervous system and giving himself human eyes while keeping the dog's large, light brown irises.

When he reformed as a dog, Alex noticed an immediate difference. Now he could actually see properly, and he wasn't perceiving his dog-limbs as though they were badly distorted human limbs anymore. He still barely knew how to walk, but at least that was now a problem of his inexperience, not the nerve signals being all tangled up.

Through trial and a whole lot of error, Alex got the hang of walking and running with a dog body. As he got more adept at it, he couldn't help but acknowledge that dogs simply did some things better. Running in particular was a whole new experience, now that he was so low to the ground and using all four limbs. He could dart around quickly and change directions on a dime, unlike how top-heavy running as a human felt.

Alex started having so much fun, in fact, that his tail began involuntarily wagging. That freaked him out so much that he quickly reverted back to human form. Just to be sure he hadn't lost all his progress, though, he briefly turned back into a dog. Much to his relief, it only took a second, just like all the other templates, instead of being the arduous process the first time was.

Despite the relative insignificance of his achievement, Alex left the warehouse in high spirits. After all, his goal was only to keep this form as a card up his sleeve, and he may not even have cause to use it ever again.

That wasn't the important part, though. The important thing was what this successful experimentation _meant_ for Alex, going forward.

For perhaps the first time, Alex actually felt like he was ahead of the curve, taking the right steps and being _proactive_ about his powers, instead of simply relying on instinct and _reacting_ to everything around him.

It wouldn't stop with mere animals. This was just the first step, the low-hanging fruit. Alex would take every tool and advantage he could find, and make them his own.

The single greatest technology humanity had ever harnessed wasn't fire, or even language. It was _evolution_. Intentional, selective breeding of everything from dogs to cows to wheat was what made humans so rampantly successful. Harnessing evolution had allowed humanity to move on from being hunter-gatherers, and build civilization. Alex had been handed the key to his own _personal_ evolution, so he was going to follow the proactive human example, and exploit it to the _fullest._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, we make the shocking discovery that Alex does in fact know how basic politeness and human social interactions work! He simply chooses to ignore them 99% of the time. Also, however demeaning Alex may consider it, the ability to turn into a dog is just too useful to pass up completely. Next chapter, we'll be seeing the third meeting between Alex and Taylor! As always, thank you for reading!


	14. Infection 2.5

**Infection 2.5**

Later that day, when I got home before my dad came back from work, I brewed some tea and plopped down on the couch to check PHO for any new messages from Alex or Tattletale.

To my relief, Alex had simply sent me a phone number.

After taking a few minutes to mull over my options, I decided that regardless of my personal distrust of Alex, more information was always better than less, so I sent him a text message.

Me: It's T. Do you want to talk?

I waited impatiently for him to respond. Thirty seconds later, I saw a message pop up.

Alex: you go first. Remember what I told you earlier?

Me: I do.

Alex: good. How far in each direction can you go?

I shivered a bit. Maybe Alex's paranoia was getting to me, because discussing my powers like this gave me the feeling of being watched. With that in mind, I texted him back.

Me: A few blocks. It varies.

Alex: How many can you use at a time?

I frowned in annoyance. He'd asked two questions in a row, without waiting for my turn. Why was Alex constantly testing me like this? It was like he was constitutionally incapable of refusing any chance to screw someone over. I texted him back as fast as possible, so he wouldn't think I was slow on the uptake.

Me: Hold on. It's my turn.

Me: I've seen a few of your quirks, but is there something less obvious I wouldn't know about?

Alex: I have a condition similar to synesthesia.

I didn't really understand what he meant by that, but at least it was a sign he was playing ball. That is, assuming he wasn't lying. _God,_ this guy had a way of keeping me on my toes. Even just texting him was exhausting.

Alex: my previous question stands.

Me: I haven't found an upper limit.

With that out of the way, I considered what to ask next. I knew a little about Alex's capabilities from the fight, but one thing that had seemed to upset Armsmaster was the fact Alex could seemingly repair his clothes. Of course, I'd found out later that Alex's clothes were simply made out of himself, but it still brought up a few questions.

Me: Can you make things besides clothes?

Alex: yes.

Oh, come _on_. I was starting to get genuinely annoyed now. That was a cheap answer, and he knew it.

Me: Let me rephrase, tell me one thing you can make besides clothes.

Alex: I've made knives before. What kinds of things can you use? Is there a hard limit?

That question was straying close to dangerous territory. I'd already decided not to tell him my powers had a weird interaction with his biology, because he seemed like the paranoid type who would react _very_ badly to that kind of information. I had to come up with a way to either explain it or dodge the question, but the latter would seem suspicious. I also had to phrase it in such a way it wouldn't tip off our hopefully-hypothetical eavesdropper.

Me: I can use almost anything that's small and simple.

Alex: how good are you at programming them with complicated instructions?

That seemed safe enough to answer. Couching my power in the metaphor of computer coding was actually quite useful; my power made bugs' brains and bodies seem very mechanistic.

Me: I'm very good with multitasking. I can get all my programs to run in parallel. That's how I made my own outfit, actually.

Alex: time out.

Alex: do you mean you designed your outfit in a CAD program? That wasn't the kind of programming I was referring to.

I smiled. _Finally,_ I'd gotten one over on Alex, and this gave me the opportunity to brag.

Me: No, I understood you. I used my little helpers to make my outfit. Out of silk.

There was a pause, and I took a sip of tea, relishing the imaginary look on his face as he realized I'd made my suit out of spider silk. Did he even know how rare and strong spider silk was? Probably, if he was some kind of science expert like he claimed.

Alex: ok. I think I'm done. You've given me a lot to think about.

I felt a flash of indignation at that. I'd gone first, and now he was trying to end the exchange on _my_ turn? No way.

Me: I went first, so you owe me another question.

Alex: I already shared about my insomnia and my injuries before.

Me: Those were freebies. You shared them without me even asking and before our agreement. They don't count.

Alex: fine. But I get to choose what to share.

I rolled my eyes in disgust. This was like pulling teeth.

Me: Just give me something I don't already know.

The reply came almost instantly, making me wonder if he'd already decided what to share.

Alex: I'm good at sleight of hand.

I slumped back in the couch. Well, that was anticlimactic. Even if I assumed he wasn't _literally_ claiming to be good at parlor tricks, just using that as a metaphor for an ability, It was still kind of useless. In fact, this whole exchange made me once again feel like I'd been cheated.

I didn't think Alex was _lying,_ per se. If I actually challenged him to prove any of his statements, I'm sure he would demonstrate they were based in some reasonable interpretation of the truth, but I still felt like Alex had gotten a lot more useful information out of this exchange than me. Had he chosen all the answers he'd give ahead of time? There was no way he'd know what I'd ask—or maybe he'd been ready with a few standard responses to choose from, and gave me whichever was most appropriate for the question.

Another text came in as I was mulling that over.

Alex: Remember what I said about this conversation. Do your part.

Me: I will. Bye.

I read through the whole conversation three more times before I deleted it, which only solidified my impression that Alex had taken me for a ride. He'd gone straight for the most useful, pertinent information, and put me on the back foot. His metaphors were better, so he was able to demand more specific information, while I went too vague and open-ended, and he only gave me token scraps in return. I'd been too focused on challenging the obvious traps he'd set for me, and ignored the subtler game he'd been playing all along, goading me into making mistakes and elaborating on answers.

 _Damn_. By the end of this game I'd either end up becoming a con artist, or more likely, I'd end up face-down in a ditch somewhere.

I had a feeling I was approaching this whole thing the wrong way. I was treating negotiations with Alex like negotiations with a potential ally, when I should be treating this like I was signing a contract with a demon, one who was trying to trick me with fine print, subtle lies, and technical truths at every turn.

Of course, my mom's advice when she'd read me the story of Faust and his bargain with the demon Mephistopheles was that you wouldn't win by trying to trick the demon, or by trying to weasel out of the deal when the debt came due. The only way to win was to refuse the demon's deal in the first place.

Well, too late for that.

I felt a pang of grief in my chest at the memory of my mom. Her absence was an old, familiar pain, never far from the surface—like something had carved huge, ragged pieces out of my soul, leaving me forever cold, broken, incomplete, and so very, _very_ alone.

I wrapped my arms around my chest, hunching and withdrawing in on myself like I was slowly imploding. God, I missed her. I missed her _so much_. I would give anything for just one more day with my mom, one more hour, one more _second_. She had greatly enjoyed riddles and word games; she would have _loved_ helping me through all this intrigue—after she was done grounding me until I was thirty. That bittersweet thought made me give out a choked half-laugh, half-sob.

I couldn't stand the feeling that she was missing out.

After giving myself a few more moments to get my breathing under control, I wiped my face and shook my head to rid it of the intrusive thoughts.

I couldn't look back, I had to keep moving forward. I picked up my phone again and looked up the number for the PHQ, then let Armsmaster's secretary know I wanted to set up a meeting tonight.

I was nervous. The Undersiders—or Tattletale, at least—had threatened my civilian identity if I let slip their names. Alex's warnings about her unpredictable nature as a Thinker came back to me, and made me feel unsettled. She'd known I was a hero all along, so what if she could find out if I ratted out their civilian identities? Her name was _Tattletale,_ after all, so maybe her power had something to do with secrets.

I couldn't take any chances. I would keep their names and faces to myself, and just hope that giving up the detail that they had a boss bankrolling them wouldn't be enough to trigger a retribution.

There was no use in worrying about that, though. The information that the Undersiders were pawns of someone else was too valuable to keep to myself. Maybe the exchange I'd had with Alex would prove to be useful practice in getting Armsmaster to take me seriously, or even reward me in some way for the information. I might ask my dad for tips about negotiations—most of his job involved yelling and deal-making for the Dockworkers Association.

Thinking of my dad only gave me a resurgent pang of the grief I'd felt earlier. We used to be so close, the three of us, and I wondered at how that shared pain had driven a wedge of silence and distance between me and my dad. Talking with him was still like walking on eggshells. We'd been reduced to little more than smalltalk for days at a time, like strangers.

I _knew_ my dad still cared about me, and I could see his worry when I took up running and clammed up about the school bullies, but neither of us broached any sensitive issues, because to avoid it hurt less. The bullies, getting my powers, now dealing with Alex and Armsmaster—there were all these basic facts, these important, fundamental aspects of my life, and I'd told my dad about _none_ of them.

I didn't want to do anything to give my dad a setback, that was the thing. He'd come so far, even if he still wasn't quite himself. I wouldn't do _anything_ to jeopardize that. When my mom died, my dad had just stopped functioning completely. It was like I'd lost _both_ of them for a while, and the thought of returning to that suffocating isolation terrified me.

So he didn't ask. And I didn't tell him. The cycle continued.

I understood my dad was probably just respecting the barriers I'd put up, but part of me still resented the fact that I _needed_ to put them up, because I knew how he'd react. My dad may have looked like the archetypal lanky nerd, but he had a raging temper underneath his mild-mannered surface. He'd get angry at the school and bullies on my behalf, but nothing would change, it would only get worse, and then he'd implode. At the end of it all, it just wasn't _fair_ that my dad had broken down even worse than I did after my mom died. That part of me still blamed him for that, even though I mostly just felt resigned and tired of all the secrets.

If nothing else, sharing some of my secrets with Alex had been frustrating, but oddly liberating. Maybe I could let a little of my true self show to my dad, even though I hated the thought of lying to him. I'd just stick as close to the truth as possible.

While I planned the approach I wanted to take, I started making dinner by myself. It was a skill one quickly learned to develop with a single parent, especially one that couldn't afford take-out all that often. I felt like changing things up a bit from the usual routine, so I pulled some chicken from the freezer to thaw in the sink and started microwaving some leftover vegetables. I got Gran's old recipe box out and decided to make chicken Parmesan.

A bit less than a half hour after I started, I heard the creak of old wood as my dad came up to the porch—skipping the half-rotted first step, as we always did—and the unlocking of the door.

"Hey," he called out. "It smells nice in here. What's cooking?"

"Chicken parm. I'm starting dinner early tonight because I wanted to head out tonight to meet a friend, if that's all right?" I said, trying to keep casual.

I turned to see my dad coming into the kitchen, and I had to admit, the surprise on his face stung a bit.

"Yeah, that's fine. Are you going to visit Emma?" he asked, the innocent question making me feel like I'd been impaled by an icicle.

Somehow, I kept the pain and awkwardness from showing on my face as I responded, "No, I met this girl. Her name is Lisa. She's a bit older than me, really smart, but kind of strange. I wanted to ask you a bit of advice about her, actually."

"Sure," my dad said, raising an eyebrow. "Just let me go get changed, I'll be back down in a bit."

As he headed upstairs, I used the opportunity to set the table and get my thoughts in order. I'd pretend Alex and Lisa were the same person for the time being, which shouldn't be too difficult as I barely knew Lisa and they both struck me as being kind of manipulative anyway. That would allow me to ask about negotiating tactics without it seeming weird.

Briefly, I wondered how my dad would react to the truth that I was making illegal deals with a brain-damaged, superpowered homeless man who was twice my age. Even if my dad knew I had powers myself, he'd probably have a stroke.

By the time my dad came down in casual wear, I'd taken the chicken out of the oven and slid it onto a plate. The cheese had come out more gooey and messy than I'd intended, but otherwise it looked fine.

"So, tell me about this new friend of yours," my dad said, reaching over the table to serve himself some chicken and carrots.

"Lisa? Well, like I said, she's a bit odd. She... she isn't hostile or anything, but it's like everything she does is a transaction or a trade. She's a deal-maker," I said, sitting down and beginning to serve myself as well.

My dad gave me a concerned look. "She's not with... you know...?"

I swallowed, the chicken suddenly feeling like dry sand in my throat. "No. She's not one of the bullies, or one of the gangs or anything. She's just kind of eccentric."

My dad gave me a relieved look. "I know the type. I take it she's already gotten you to agree to something?"

"The other way around, actually, but I had to negotiate a lot with her, and I came out the other side feeling like I'd been put through the wringer," I said with an exasperated smile. "I was wondering if you had any advice."

My dad chewed on his food thoughtfully for a few moments before swallowing and saying, "I could give you a few tips, sure. What exactly did you get her to agree to?"

"Remember that group project about capes I mentioned this morning, in my World Issues class? It's related to that," I said, fudging the timeline a bit. "She agreed to help me, but she outlined a lot of conditions, and in hindsight I think she was trying to trip me up with all the smaller details while she got the big stuff past me. Does that make any sense?"

He nodded. "Sounds like a snow job to me. One of the oldest tricks in the book. Basically, they try to flatter you, or throw out a whole bunch of details, or try to confuse you. Whatever it is, the real point is to _distract_ you, like a shell game. They want to keep you focused on anything except the truly important thing they're trying to hide or sneak past you."

I picked at my food with my fork. "Yeah, that sounds about right. I guess I fell for it."

My dad waggled his finger at me, smiling wryly. "Oh, no. No daughter of _mine_ is going to get caught flat-footed in a negotiation! We're a union family, and you don't mess with the union!"

I smiled back, slightly. This was more like how my dad used to be, even if it was coming off a bit forced.

"So, the way you counter a snow job is to stand firm to your goals. Don't back down. If anything seems confusing, ask questions until you get to the heart of the matter. Nine times out of ten, if it's a distraction, they'll just drop the issue if you press them on it, and move on to something else. If they don't, always be willing to walk away, because even in doing so, they might try to stop you with a better deal," my dad explained.

That... made a lot of sense, actually. Alex had done exactly that to me at the library. He also hadn't seemed too invested in actually _defending_ anything he said or did, he was all about the aggressive attitude. Pressing forward, always being on the attack. I had been most successful when I'd disrupted that rhythm, questioned him, or surprised him.

"Thanks, Dad," I said thoughtfully. "I think that'll help a lot."

My dad went further into the weeds of explaining various negotiating tactics, such as highball offers and last-minute additions, and because he talked so much, I finished my dinner before he was even half-done with what was on his plate. It might have been the most he'd talked to me in months, and I felt incredibly guilty to interrupt him while he was being animated for once, but my eyes kept drifting nervously to the digital clock on the stove.

"I should get going," I said, awkwardly interrupting his story about a good-cop bad-cop ploy a company had tried to pull on him. "I wanted to meet Lisa at a café."

"Oh, wait," he said, standing from the table as I did. He fished in his wallet and handed me a ten. "Here. For the coffee. Sorry I don't have more. Have fun, and don't let Lisa get the better of you, okay?"

I took the bill, and gave him one last hug, trying to squeeze out the guilt I felt for lying to him. "Thanks. I'll be back in a bit. Love you, Dad."

"Love you too."

I slipped out the door, picking up the backpack I'd stashed my costume in, and hid it from view of the house as I left.

I broke into a jog, both to make up for lost time and to try to forget the nagging feeling that I'd bribed my dad with family time and emotional openness to get him to agree to this.

Maybe that feeling was just the ongoing haggling with Alex warping my thoughts. Hopefully.

As I reached the Boardwalk, I headed south instead of north. I'd chosen to meet Armsmaster at the old ferry terminal, the perpetually-suspended project that my dad had never been successful at convincing the city to get back up and running.

I donned my costume before even coming into sight of the terminal. As I slipped past the DO NOT ENTER signs cordoning it off, I felt strangely transgressive, even though I'd literally gotten permission to come here from Armsmaster himself. I headed up the stairs to the outdoor patio overlooking the Bay, and saw him standing there alone.

The leader of the local heroes looked incredibly imposing in his towering power armor, yet he also seemed weary as he leaned against his halberd like a staff. He was staring out over the water as twilight fell. With the sun setting below the mountains behind us, the clouds above the Bay were cast in vivid reds, oranges, and purples that were reflected into the placid waters below, and onto the shimmering forcefield surrounding the floating Protectorate headquarters in the center. Few large vessels were out on the water, the days of massive container ships having largely passed under the merciless pressure of the Endbringer Leviathan's attacks on port cities.

Armsmaster turned around as he heard my approach, and even with his eyes hidden behind his visor, I could feel his gaze drilling into me.

I suddenly felt like a foolishly audacious insect who had drawn the attention of a titan. The fact that both of us were wearing masks was both a blessing and a curse.

"Good, you've arrived," Armsmaster said, sounding impatient.

I inclined my head apologetically. "I'm sorry it took a while to get here. Got waylaid by family for a bit. I was hoping the ABB members I busted might buy me some favor, because I've discovered a situation I need some help with."

Armsmaster considered for a second, then waved a hand for me to continue.

"I should explain things first. First off, the Undersiders thought I was a villain, so they contacted me and gave me their sales pitch. I didn't take them up on it, obviously, but I remembered what you said about how slippery they were, so I decided to hear them out, and fish for information." I said.

Armsmaster's hand went to a button on his halberd, his body language radiating danger. I backed up a step without even consciously choosing to do so.

"That was a _very_ dangerous thing to do," Armsmaster said in a low voice. "I have reason to believe Regent is an alias for the villain Hijack. He's a Master wanted for murder, with a power that can control people like puppets, if you spend long enough around him. This could be a trap, so you'd better convince me otherwise, and _quickly."_

My mind very nearly blanked at Armsmaster's terrifying demand, but I seized on one thing from our last meeting that had stood out to me. "When we first met, you seemed to accept my story too easily, and changed your mind too quickly," I said, struggling to keep my voice even. "Am I off the mark, or do you have a lie detector, or a power that works in pretty much the same way?"

Armsmaster's mouth thinned into a line. "You're not wrong," he conceded.

"Good. That should make things easier," I said with forced calm. "I only spent a few minutes around Regent, and I don't think I'm being Mastered. How long would it take? Would I feel anything? Would I know I was being controlled?"

"It would take repeated, prolonged exposure to his power over the course of several minutes or even hours, and yes, you would know. His control also degrades with distance, and my scans aren't showing anyone else in the area, so he likely wouldn't be able to control you dextrously enough to beat my lie detector from outside my radius. I'll consider you clear, for now." Armsmaster said in a businesslike tone, as if the possibility of being mind-control was just part of his daily routine.

I nodded, taking a shaky breath. "That's—good. I didn't find anything like that in my research about him."

"That information hasn't been disseminated, and it _won't_ be," said Armsmaster, his tone brooking no argument.

"I won't tell anyone," I said quickly.

Armsmaster nodded. "Good. I'm glad you seem to understand how dangerous that was. So, what was it you found out about them? Are you willing to come to the Rig to present your findings in front of the team?"

I felt panic rising up in my chest at the idea. "I don't think that's really necessary. The important thing I wanted to tell you is that there's someone paying the Undersiders to do these crimes, orchestrating things from behind the scenes, and I have no idea who that is yet."

Armsmaster frowned. "You're lying. Or at least, that's not the whole truth."

 _Damn_. I had thought saying something technically correct would have gone unnoticed.

"That's all that's safe for me to tell, but the rest is _private_ , and I don't think it really changes anything," I said, desperately hoping he'd pick up on the hint.

To my relief, Armsmaster nodded, although his mouth was twisted up like he'd sucked on a lemon. "I see. So there's a sponsor or boss at work? This is the first I've heard of anything like that. Admittedly, we know little about the Undersiders, but do you have any evidence to back this up?"

I shook my head, causing tresses of my hair to fall in front of my face. "I don't have any hard evidence, just what they said. I don't know why they'd lie about _that,_ though. They told me that any jobs we pulled together would have a payout that's split evenly five ways, but also that they each get two thousand dollars a month as a sort of retainer. Where would that extra money come from if they didn't have a boss? I thought about it, and even if one of them was pretending to be the boss and paying the other three members for whatever reason, the whole team would need to be pulling in more than thirty-two thousand dollars a _month_ just for that one member to break even while bankrolling the others. Do you know if they make that kind of money?"

"Even small teams can pull in a surprising amount doing petty crimes that go unreported, but no, I think we'd have noticed if the Undersiders were consistently operating on that kind of scale," said Armsmaster, his pose becoming more relaxed for the first time since we'd started talking. "The biggest job they've pulled by far was their robbery of the Ruby Dreams casino five weeks ago, which only pulled in about thirty thousand dollars. For the time being, let's assume there _is_ a boss. That's a good piece of intel—after they're captured, we can use that information as leverage in a plea bargain."

I felt something unwind in me at Armsmaster's praise. This whole conversation, I'd been worried he'd be angry at me for wasting his time.

"Was there anything else?" Armsmaster asked.

I shrugged. "About the Undersiders? No. At first, I'd hoped to infiltrate their group to find out more, but my new, uh, _colleague_ managed to convince me otherwise."

Armsmaster cocked his head slightly. "You're serious? But how could—never mind, it's a good thing that you followed this colleague's advice. I'd like to know who you're working with."

"It's the Case 53 that fought Lung with me," I said. "I met with him, and we worked out a deal. He'll be giving me advice and helping me out as backup while I'm getting started as a hero."

"What did you offer in return?" Armsmaster asked, a note of suspicion in his voice.

"Money and teamwork, mostly. I'm helping him get back on his feet, since he lost pretty much everything he ever had. Family, friends, memories—I almost feel bad for asking anything in return for my help," I said, fervently hoping Armsmaster wouldn't ask me where I'd gotten the money.

"You know, the Protectorate takes in Case 53s, so you don't have to feel obligated to support him yourself," Armsmaster said sternly.

"I already told him the PRT could help him, and I don't think he's interested," I said flatly. "He's not just some wayward stray. I even offered to help him contact the PRT or give him free money for food or bus fare, but he refused. I think he's too paranoid about hidden strings attached, and too proud to accept charity... not that it stops him from driving a really hard bargain."

"I see," said Armsmaster, though he clearly didn't approve. "Well, let him know the PRT isn't in the business of press-ganging Case 53s, or institutionalizing them. We also have the MIRIS initiative to help any parahuman who wants to become a rogue, or use their powers for more commercial ends."

"I'll tell him. No guarantee he'll accept, though. He's... prickly." I said, and in my head I added, _or maybe he's just a prick._ I had to stop myself from laughing at the thought.

"So, do you and this Case 53 have names?" Armsmaster asked.

"I still haven't decided, but he's calling himself Revenant. Apparently his power has to do with coming back to life, or something. In hindsight, I _really_ wish he'd picked Lazarus instead. I hope the both of us together don't get mistaken for villains again..." I said with a sigh.

Armsmaster turned his head to the side, as if something else had caught his attention. "That name has already been taken three times over, each time by villains. Doesn't look like any of them were Case 53s, though, so at least there's that. Names seem to be a recurring problem with you," he said dryly.

I rubbed at my temples in exasperation. "Ugh. Yeah, you're right. At this point, I wonder if I shouldn't let someone else choose my name _for_ me."

Armsmaster turned to face the Bay again, cracking a smile for the first time. "You know, the Wards have whole teams to help them with PR, image, and optics. In our line of work, a good reputation is serious business, you shouldn't underestimate the importance of your masked identity."

I walked forwards to stand beside him, leaning my elbows on the railing. "Yeah, that's what makes this difficult. I'm not good at any of that stuff, which is why I want to let my actions speak louder, you know?"

Armsmaster's voice took on a harder tone. "I do. Believe me, I do. Look, we're not supposed to come out and say it this directly, but you _really_ should join the Wards. This isn't a game. The gangs have been escalating recently. Just in the last twenty-four hours, I've been working cases of multiple homicide, arson, mass kidnappings... Frankly, even with help, you're not safe out there."

I hesitated, indecision twisting me up inside, then told Armsmaster the truth. "In all honesty, I probably _will_ join the Wards at some point. But not now. I'm not doing this to be _safe_. I want to make a difference, and I need to prove to myself that I can."

Armsmaster looked down at me. "You say you want to make a difference. Do you know Stain, Frenetic, Browbeat, or Whirlygig?"

I shook my head. "No. Who are they?"

"Local heroes and villains. Solo operators. The only reason some of these capes even have a _name_ is because other people gave it to them, or they make their own online entries. There are a dozen more that don't even have names. Within weeks, days, or even hours of making themselves known, most of them will be pressured to join a team or gang. Sound familiar?" Armsmaster asked pointedly.

I looked away, crossing my arms. "I didn't agree to join with the Undersiders, even after they made a _very_ generous offer. Don't I get some credit for that?"

Armsmaster made a cutting gesture with his hand. "That's not what I'm trying to say. This isn't about whether you'll _just say no_ to villainy, it's about your efficacy as a hero. Take Browbeat, for example. He lasted all of four weeks as an independent hero. We're actually in the process of bringing him over to the Wards right now. But he didn't quit being an independent hero because he was doing _poorly,_ quite the opposite. He's got a good power. He's strong. He managed to beat Skidmark and Squealer on one occasion, and Victor and Othala on another, though he lost a fight against Regent and Hellhound. That loss helped him recognize that his previous victories didn't mean much unless he could make the win _stick_. With communications, intelligence, transportation, training, equipment, and team support to act as force multipliers, he'll be so much better able to make a difference than he'd _ever_ be able to do on his own. When the villains outnumber the heroes so badly in this city, the heroes can't afford to be _inefficient."_

I took a step back, bristling at Armsmaster's belittling words. I knew what he was saying made sense, but it didn't make me any less angry that he'd preemptively dismissed any contributions I could make. In his unfair framework, even any good I managed to accomplish would be overshadowed by the _hypothetical_ that I could have done even better with the Wards, no matter how impossible that was to prove. It was exactly the kind of no-win, institutional bullshit I'd come to expect from authority, and I _despised_ it.

I would have walked out right then and there, but Armsmaster had clearly picked up on my mood. He sighed, and continued in a more conciliatory tone. "Look. This is dangerous, but I think continuing to warn about the risks would just be a waste of both of our time. I can't condone your choice to go independent, but I can at least give you my private number. It might prove useful to you later, depending on how things go."

Armsmaster held out a glossy silver business card with his blue V-shaped logo on it, which still looked remarkably mundane compared to the power armor gauntlet it was held in.

"Thank you," I said, taking the card even though I felt hurt and disappointed.

Armsmaster inclined his head. "You did the right thing, coming to me with this information. I appreciate it."

"Thank you," I repeated, and this time it sounded more genuine, at least to me.

"Good luck," said Armsmaster, dismissing me with a nod. Giving him one last look, I backed away and left the terminal.

I recounted the meeting back in my mind all the way back home. Clearly, Armsmaster was just waiting for me to fail. He might not have been malicious about it, not like a bully, but he was still _expecting_ it, that day when I'd get in too deep, call that number, and have him come bail me out and dump me in the Wards program.

I felt my determination flaring up inside me, growing higher and higher with every step I ran towards home.

So, Armsmaster didn't think I could get anything done as an independent hero, huh? _Like hell_. I'd just have to prove him wrong, and silence my own lingering doubts for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *1930s radio announcer voice*  
> In this installment, we learn that Detective Armsmaster is on the case! Will he find the truth, or just a dead end? Stay tuned and find out!
> 
> /end gag
> 
> Next time, we're back to Alex's POV, and then Armsmaster's interlude will close off the arc. I for one am really excited about arc 3. Thanks for reading!


	15. Incubation 2.6

**Infection 2.6**

Alex's newly enhanced senses took on a _whole_ new dimension at night.

Brockton Bay was unlike any other major city Alex could remember. Its neglected electrical infrastructure created a patchwork of dim, barely-functioning streetlights interspersed with whole blocks of Stygian darkness. The rich parts of town were, of course, brightly lit, but the glow against the cloudy, humid night sky only served to accentuate the pitch black of the poor parts of town. In many places, the only illumination came from trashbin fires, truly the Stone Age solution.

Alex _reveled_ in the urban decay. He didn't feel even the slightest bit threatened by anyone that could be lurking in the dark, nor did he feel sleepy, and his incredibly acute senses of hearing and smell rendered his eyes almost extraneous. When enhanced by his electroreception to sense things in his immediate personal space, he could truly navigate stealthily, unhindered by the need for light.

That night, Alex contented himself by wandering around the city and searching for easy prey with his new senses, but he didn't need enhanced hearing in order to detect the slightly muffled gunshots that echoed out over Lincoln street.

Alex stood still, debating whether to investigate further. After a few moments' deliberation, he decided to let things play out and observe the fallout from afar. He continued up the street at a fast pace, noting that his surroundings seemed to be getting more and more familiar.

Wracking his many sets of memories, Alex tried to figure out why this part of town seemed so familiar. After a few seconds of really stopping to look around, it became clear this was the same part of town where Alabaster's weapons workshop was. The porcelain-white Empire Eighty-Eight freak had a minor secondary power that let him keep things maintained in top condition, so there was a constant rotating roster of weapons coming and going from an automobile repair shop nearby. It wasn't quite Alabaster's lair, that location was a lot more secure as he obviously couldn't keep a civilian identity with his color mutation, but it was where he spent a significant amount of time.

Alex came as close as he dared to the repair shop, which did indeed seem to be the source of all the gunshots. From a block away, he held still and listened in. Past the gunshots, he could hear muffled shouting in English and what sounded like Korean and Japanese. The words couldn't really be made out, though, just the pattern and inflection of the voices.

There was a sudden burst of pressure through the air and ground accompanied by a sharp _crack,_ like two huge stones colliding, probably some kind of bomb or grenade. Bakuda or no, that kind of ordnance could have come from either side. There were screams and more shouting, then a few more gunshots, and finally silence.

Police sirens began to wail far off in the distance, far too little and too late. Alex suspected that between his own recent activities and the gangs, the cops had been spread _very_ thin indeed.

The wind shifted, and Alex was shaken from his thoughts when he caught a familiar smell.

Diesel. Marijuana. Old plastic. Cheap body spray. Wool. Candy. Instant ramen.

There was no mistaking it, that was the smell of 'Lucky' Tsuneyuki Yoshida's van. Alex changed direction to investigate further, following the smell.

One street over, Alex found the vanagon parked haphazardly at the end of an alley, backed in as far as it could go without bumping into the chain-link fence behind it. The tent-roof was down, and it was too dark and silent to have someone inside, but the radiator was ticking at odd intervals. The van had been driven pretty recently.

Alex could smell Lucky himself, the human underneath the marijuana and spray-on cologne. The enticing smell was getting stronger, so Alex guessed he was getting closer. That suited him just fine—he might be in a position to grab a snack and some answers if Lucky was alone.

The first question that came to mind was, what the hell was an isolated Azn Bad Boyz dealer like Lucky doing camped out so close to an Empire stronghold during an assault? Lucky wasn't anyone's idea of an enforcer. Had he just been shuttling ABB members to the fight, or had he participated himself?

Alex heard a metallic clanging and shuffling of feet drawing nearer to the mouth of the alley. Sure enough, it was none other than Lucky, looking like death warmed over.

The gangly drug dealer was equipped for battle, in a slapdash, improvised sort of way. He was wearing a red baseball helmet and a red-and-white motorcycle jacket, the kind with padding that served as armor. He was leaning on a bloodied aluminum baseball bat like a cane for support, and he was bleeding from a split lip and a few other cuts on his face, right leg, and knuckles. The coppery scent of fresh blood and meat made Alex's mouth water.

Lucky hobbled into the dark alley, pulling out a phone with his free hand and using the dim light from the screen to navigate.

When Lucky caught sight of Alex waiting by his car in the darkness, he was startled so badly he nearly fell over. _"_ _Oh fuck!_ Don't—oh. It's you. Christ, I thought you were a Nazi."

Alex didn't say anything, just smirked in amusement at Lucky's reaction. If scaring the living daylights out of people was this satisfying, he really ought to do it more often.

Lucky coughed and groaned, bending over and bracing his hands on his baseball bat and uninjured left leg.

"Ugh. The hell are _you_ doing here? Don't tell me you want a piece of me, too. You'd better get in fuckin' line," he said darkly, his words somewhat slurred by a hash oil lollipop he clenched determinedly between his teeth like a tiny, thin cigarette.

Alex leaned casually against the passenger door of the van. "Luck's finally run out, huh?"

Removing the lollipop from his mouth, Lucky spat a bloody wad onto the ground. He straightened to his full height, an inch or two taller than Alex, and glared down at him, making a poking gesture with his baseball bat. "Oh, hardy- _fuckin'_ -har. Look, you don't have the faintest _fucking_ idea what's going on, so why don't you haul your leather-clad hobo ass away, and go brighten someone else's day, huh? I'm fucking _done."_

Ignoring the biting sarcasm and implied threat, Alex looked around the alley. It was suitably dark, but a bit too open-ended and public for his liking; he was too easily visible from the street. Besides which, he really didn't know how to address the problem of the leftover liquid remains yet, and he had no intention of repeating his earlier mistake by leaving a crime scene. Fortunately, he had another, more conventional option to get Lucky to go somewhere nice and private.

Lucky put his unfinished lollipop into a baggie in his pocket and used his free hand to fish around for his car keys, limped past Alex to reach the door of his van, and opened it. He turned on the lights, then looked back at Alex.

"You're lookin' a lot more alive today, buddy," Lucky said, brushing the dyed green streak of hair out of his canted eyes. "What's your secret, huh? Revlon? Maybelline? Blood of virgins?"

Alex felt a jolt of alarm at that, but realized Lucky had been snidely remarking about his new, healthier appearance, the coloration he'd stolen from his victims. It was kind of surreal that Lucky had accidentally hit close to the mark.

"Fuck _me_. I'm way too goddamn sober for this shit," said Lucky with a pained grunt, levering himself with some difficulty into the van and collapsing onto the bench seat. His aluminum baseball bat dropped to the rug and rolled out the open door, noisily clattering to the ground outside the van. He didn't even bother trying to stop it or pick it up.

"Don't die on me just yet," said Alex with a humorless little smile. "I still have a use for you. Come with me."

Lucky pulled off his helmet and didn't turn his head, he simply lifted a slightly shaky hand in Alex's direction and gave him the finger.

"You aren't in a position to refuse." Alex said, taking a step towards him.

Lucky did look up, then, and cringed. "Oh _God_ —cut that shit out, you smile like a fuckin' serial killer."

Alex's smile only grew more predatory. "Last chance. I'm done asking nicely."

"I don't care how you ask. Piss off." Lucky said, leaning over to pick up his bat and making to shut the sliding van door.

Alex effortlessly stopped the door with one hand, and with the other he quickly reached into his jacket, pulling out Spencer's revolver and pointing it squarely at Lucky's forehead. "Come with me, right now, or I'll blow your fucking brains out."

Lucky's eyes widened, but to Alex's complete surprise, he didn't drop the bat or react fearfully. Instead, he stared right into Alex's eyes with his face twisted up into a hateful rictus grin. "Go ahead, _motherfucker_. I'm rigged to a Tinker bomb. If you kill me, you'll get caught in the explosion too. Our bombs go off if we die."

Alex's confident smile fled in an instant, and he instinctively took a step back, but he didn't stop aiming at Lucky. "You might be bluffing. If there's a bomb, I want to see it."

"Or what? You'll shoot me and kill us both?" Lucky said scornfully.

Wordlessly, Alex lowered the revolver to aim at Lucky's crotch.

Lucky slumped back down in resignation, his brief surge of spiteful courage leaving him. He spoke in a hollow voice. "Shit. I'm as good as dead if you shoot me. I'm as good as dead either way..."

"The bomb," Alex demanded.

"Look here," said Lucky, tilting his neck and pushing back his hair to expose an ugly scab where his neck met the base of his skull. It had been unevenly stitched up, but still looked pretty new. It was swollen around the area.

"What am I looking at?" Alex said impatiently.

"That's where the Queen Bitch, Bakuda, put the remote-activated bomb in me. In my _fuckin' head._ See that lump? Anything goes wrong, or do anything she doesn't like, and _boom!"_ Lucky said, his voice hitching higher, making him sound half-crazed. "She's in charge now. Took over the whole ABB after Lung went missing in action."

Instantly, the pieces clicked into place. The abandoned territory, the skittish population of the Docks, Lucky's drastic shift from being a frivolous stoner to a wounded, desperate animal. "She's taking hostages and using them as soldiers," Alex mused aloud.

A gaunt, harrowed look came over Lucky. "Yeah. It's not just me and the kidnapped Chinatown people anymore, either. She put bombs in the ABB enforcers too, and lately she's been takin' anybody she can get her cunty little mitts on. Doesn't matter if they're yellow, white, black, or brown. Now we _all_ gotta throw ourselves into her suicidal gambits, or else she'll turn us inside-out or something. And that's not an exaggeration."

Burning fury rose up inside Alex at that. _More_ Tinker bullshit? For fuck's sake, couldn't Bakuda have at least have stuck with only implanting Asians so he could know who he had to avoid eating? It was one thing to set traps, but now she was sneaking poison pills into his meals? That was the last straw. Bakuda had always been an absolute menace, and as far as Alex knew, this was all just _incidental_ fuckery—she wasn't even specifically targeting him. At least, not _yet_.

 _Okay, priority one: Bakuda has to go,_ Alex thought to himself. With that in mind, what were his next steps? He needed a plan.

Alex checked the alley behind him, then looked back to Lucky. "I guess I won't be taking you anywhere. But I still have questions, and you're going to answer them."

Lucky glared at Alex. "Yes, _fine,_ I'll answer your questions, Dirty Harry. Not like I got anything better to do. You can go ahead and stop wavin' that gun around. I couldn't fight off a determined kitten in this condition, much less _you."_

"True," Alex said flatly, but he didn't move the gun. "Why don't we start with what the hell happened just now?"

Lucky lolled his head around and sighed. "So... what happened was a different set of snatchers came by just after you left the other day. Fuckers were _coordinated_. I thought it was just you coming back, and they caught me. Shoulda just left everything behind..."

"I didn't ask for your entire sad-sack life story," Alex snarled. "Get to the _fucking point!"_

"Jesus, what the _hell_ happened to suddenly turn you all aggro, anyway? The fuck did I ever do to _you,_ huh?" Lucky snapped back.

Alex grit his teeth. He'd originally thought brandishing the gun would render lies and masks irrelevant, and that Lucky would be his dinner by now, so he didn't have a story prepared. Alex cast about for the first thing he could think of. "You're a gangster. You're holding a bloody weapon. You _are_ a fucking weapon. I'm just protecting myself."

Lucky dropped the bat, throwing up his hands in exasperation. _"_ _Bullshit!_ You were just hanging out in the dark next to a shootout like it was nothing! Why are you asking me _pointless_ fucking questions that'll be in tomorrow's headlines, anyway?! What the fuck did you _really_ come here for?!"

"Bakuda," said Alex, annoyed that Lucky had seen through his previous lie. "Tell me where she is, and I'll let you go."

The livid color drained from Lucky's face. His eyes went wild and fearful again. "You can't. I _can't_. I don't know where she is right now, she constantly moves around and just tells me where to go and what to do by text. And... even if I _did_ know where she was, I couldn't tell you."

"Why? This explanation had _better_ be good," Alex said coldly.

"Bakuda is batshit crazy, but she's covered all the bases," said Lucky, wiping his brow. He was sweating, even in the cold night air. "She's got us rigged to blow, like I said, but that's not even half of it. She can make anyone go off. Any time, anywhere, no warning. She told us if we tried to get help, or told anyone where she was, she'd kill us all. And we can't just shoot her, or even get close to her to try to catch _her_ in the blast when she decides to kill one of us, because she's got _Oni fucking Lee_ as a bodyguard, and she put a dead-man's switch inside herself. If she dies, so does everyone—and most people, she's got their families, their friends, everything. It's—"

Alex grunted in annoyance as he heard the sirens getting closer. "The police are going to be here soon," he interrupted Lucky. "If you don't want to meet them with some extra holes, you'd better talk fast."

Lucky's eyes shifted back and forth rapidly as he thought. "How about this—you get in my van, and I'll get us away from the cops, then I'll tell you everything I know about Bakuda. She's your enemy, yeah? Well, she's mine too, so you know I'm telling the truth."

Alex looked Lucky up and down. He looked like the dogs had been at him, and he was probably least a little high on top of that. "Can you even drive like this?" Alex asked.

"No choice, is there? Story of my fucking life." Lucky said with a pained, bitter parody of a grin. He leaned around the pointing gun without permission and painfully lifted himself up out of the bench seat to plop down in the driver's seat.

Alex eyed the van dubiously. He had no earthly idea how much he weighed by now, but he knew it had to be quite a lot, and the old Volkswagen vans were somewhat notorious for having all the structural integrity of a box of donuts.

 _Ah, fuck it, it'll probably be fine,_ he thought to himself.

Against Alex's better judgement, he climbed in the van, the old suspension listing to the side and creaking back into equilibrium as he settled in. The engine came to a rattling start.

"Would it be too much to ask for you to stop pointing that gun at me while I'm tryin' to drive?" Lucky asked, easing the vanagon out of the alley and into the street.

Grunting in irritation, Alex lowered the gun from the back of Lucky's head.

 _"_ _Thank_ you," Lucky said fervently. "Two days. _Two goddamn days_ I've had to put up with people yankin' my chain with death threats. I don't need any more of that shit."

Lucky's agitation translated to rather jerky and sloppy steering, and Alex was tempted to point the gun back at his head just to get him to drive better.

"When does Bakuda expect you?" asked Alex.

"She doesn't give a shit about schedules, if you're not where she wants you when she wants you, you're dead." Lucky said bleakly. "We're tethered to her, and she's got us all tracked through our bombs, so we can't run."

"Efficient," Alex said half-admiringly.

"It's hell." Lucky said tonelessly. "We're on tenterhooks all the time. I gotta constantly stop myself from clawing this _thing_ outta my head with my bare hands. I haven't bathed, I haven't changed clothes, I can't even _sleep_ for fear of missing a text. It's only been two days for most of us, but it feels like _weeks_. Some of the people..."

Lucky trailed off, clenching his jaw. He swallowed heavily. "Some of them, I think the stress got to 'em already. Couldn't take it. They went crazy, or made mistakes they shouldn't. Bakuda turned them into _lessons_. Back when I was taken to this house with her, waiting to get the bomb put in my head, there were these two—a guy and his girlfriend—they talked with each other, decided to try to get on Bakuda's good side, you know? They..."

Lucky paused for a few moments as his voice grew thick to the point he could barely speak. "She made them _do_ things to each other. In front of us. Mocked them. Killed them. Eventually."

"Holy fuck," said Alex, genuinely disgusted. "I knew she was psycho, but that's Slaughterhouse Nine material. I wonder if any of you hostages are going to end up getting powers from all this."

Lucky barked out a hoarse, humorless laugh. "Wouldn't that be rich? If any of us do, I bet it'll be one of the shitty powers you get from hittin' rock bottom, and more than likely, the rest of us will be fucked either way. But still... I kinda wish it _would_ happen, just to see Bakuda dead before I go. Maybe—maybe I'm one of those people who just can't deal. I don't really care anymore, I only want it all to _stop."_

Alex was startled to notice Lucky's eyes were brimming with tears. The ordeal was clearly getting the better of him, and he shuddered, making a wretched little noise as he choked down a sob.

"I can't stop thinkin' about the guy and his girlfriend. Bakuda got bored halfway through, so she made us all give suggestions, and she'd hurt us if they weren't... bad enough..." said Lucky, tears now streaming freely down his face. He continued in hushed gasps. "I was one of the last, and they were already so beat up, but I couldn't think of anything that, that no one else, hadn't already said... so I told him to make her... swallow her own _teeth."_

Alex had no idea what to do or say in the wake of that unprompted confession. There was simply no dignified way to try to tell a grown man to stop crying, so he reluctantly cleared his throat and cast about in his memories for something appropriate to say. "For fuck's sake, pull yourself together, Yoshida. Bakuda's torture isn't your fault, and you need to focus on driving."

Contrary to Alex's expectations, Lucky did seem to firm up a bit.

"Right. Right. Stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on, and all that. Mom shoulda moved us to Britain instead of the States, God knows a British accent sounds better..." Lucky muttered, seemingly to himself.

Alex tried to parse the rambling nonsense, and wondered how much marijuana Lucky had managed to ingest from that lollipop. It couldn't have been _that_ much. Maybe the rambling was just a result of the stress, hunger, and sleeplessness instead.

"Back on topic," Alex said briskly. "I want to know more about what Bakuda's up to. Do you know where she's operating?"

"If you want to avoid getting blown up, best to just get out of town," said Lucky, wiping his eyes dry. "That's not me being a smartass, either. I really mean it. She made me plant a bomb at the Medhall headquarters, she called it _insurance,_ but if it gets back to her I told you, I'm fucked."

"I don't care about Medhall," Alex said dismissively, and he meant it. Randall had been one of Medhall's lower-level managers in his day job, which was more or less the same role he played in the gang, so he knew the pharmaceutical company was basically the Empire's chief money-laundering outlet. As far as Alex was concerned, anything that fucked over the Empire's upper echelons while leaving most of the unpowered street-level thugs intact for him was akin to removing the stubborn lid from the pickle jar.

"It's not just Medhall," said Lucky, shaking his head. "She's been having people plant bombs all over Brockton, north and south. They're a lot bigger than the ones she puts inside people. Some of them even have holograms to make them invisible, or look like something else. No idea where most of 'em are. We're pretty much on a total blackout, except for her orders. I can't even say goodbye to Mom. Hell, I'm even kinda sorry I can't talk to my walking disaster of an ex one last time."

Alex frowned. "Hey. Enough moping. You need to focus, what else is there?"

Lucky gave Alex a look in the rearview mirror, his eyes red and puffy, but his expression determined. "From what I saw, Bakuda usually keeps about, uh, ten of her enforcers around on shifts, but they're staggered out. I think it's so she can keep more than a few from gettin' caught up in any one explosion. The slaves are mostly tied up and herded around like cattle in a slaughterhouse, until she can get a bomb planted in them. Since I'm kinda between a slave and one of the enforcers, they send me out to get supplies and stuff mostly, and bring it to a dead-drop."

"Of course they use _fucking_ dead drops," Alex growled in frustration. "Is there anything else you left out? Any details, any weaknesses?"

"Bakuda's a psychotic, arrogant, murdering cunt of the highest order," Lucky spat venomously. "Like, I think Oni Lee has a body count somewhere in the high double digits, no one's really sure, and he's a sadist that likes takin' people apart piece by piece, but he isn't even a _tenth_ as crazy as she is."

"Accurate," said Alex, thinking back to the bomb he'd blundered into. "I think we're done, then. Pull over here and let me out."

Lucky complied, parking against a curb in a shabby residential block. He gripped the steering wheel and used it to painfully shift himself so he was facing Alex behind him, meeting him eye-to-eye.

"Look... if I'm being honest... the way things are going, I don't see a way out for me." said Lucky, his voice going rough again. "I don't think I'm long for this world. Maybe you get a kick from that, I can't even fucking _guess_ what your deal is anymore, but if anything I said helped you, even a little, can you just... give me a little hope? Please? Even if you don't really mean it, just... something I can hang on to?"

Alex hesitated. Leaving Lucky in Bakuda's hands might be leaving himself a known quantity somewhere down the line, a pawn he might leverage to his advantage later. He glanced away and said, "Bakuda is definitely on my shit list. I'm going to try to take her down any way I can, so long as it doesn't detonate all her bombs. That would be shooting everyone in the foot, myself included."

Lucky seemed to steel himself for something, only to hang his head, but then he turned the gesture into a shallow bow. "Thank you. Truly."

Alex raised an eyebrow at the unexpected display of gratitude. "I think you just set a new speed record for Stockholm Syndrome."

To Alex's surprise, Lucky barked out a genuine laugh.

"After Bakuda? You're the best hostage-taker a guy could ask for! Five stars, A-plus, ten out of ten, would get kidnapped again!" said Lucky, leaning against his steering wheel as he descended into a fit of uncontrollable giggling.

Alex just shook his head. Stress and drugs truly did strange things to the human mind.

"If you're being chased by a hungry bear, you don't have to outrun the bear, all you have to do is outrun the guy next to you," said Alex. He stepped out of the van and rested his hands on top of the doorframe. "Lay off the pot and do whatever Bakuda says. Her kidnapping spree is totally unsustainable. You just need to buy yourself enough time for the situation to resolve itself, one way or another."

Left unsaid was the fact that Bakuda's crime spree gave Alex some plausible cover for his own crime spree, and would hopefully last long enough to allow him to refine a sustainable, untraceable method of disappearing people.

Lucky gave Alex a forced approximation of his usual sunny smile. "Givin' me advice? You really _do_ care!"

Alex snorted and slid the door shut, rolling his eyes. Contrary to Lucky's interpretation, Alex only cared about keeping Bakuda's hands out of his goddamn cookie jar.

Watching as the appallingly ugly brown brick of a van slowly puttered away, Alex reflected on his mental to-do list. It wasn't a lie that even posthumously, Bakuda might be able to fuck Brockton Bay over six ways to Sunday with that dead man's switch, and by extension, fuck over Alex. He had to consider alternative foraging options, now that the ABB and random street thugs were firmly off the menu, at least until he or someone else resolved the Bakuda situation.

The thing was, even if he knew where Bakuda was, Alex didn't want to attack her directly. Lung could remember all too well how Bakuda had bragged at length about being able to build bombs in the _gigaton_ range of blast yield.

As proud as he was of his sturdiness, Alex had no intention of testing his mettle against the equivalent of a fucking _thermonuclear bomb._ He was under no illusions about his nature.

Alex was an apex predator, plain and simple. Contrary to the _modus operandi_ of Hollywood monsters, _actual_ apex predators didn't go around picking unnecessary fights with other apex predators or strong prey that could injure or even kill them. That strategy was absolutely idiotic, a sign of desperation. Instead, apex predators targeted the weak and injured. They didn't fight fair. They had no use for honor or glory, and neither did Alex.

Just like a disease, the best thing to do with a dangerous Tinker was to root them out and completely destroy them as fast as possible before they had time to adapt. By extension, the best way Alex could see to do that safely would be to get someone else to do it. They also needed to take her down non-lethally, to avoid the dead-man's switch.

Of course, Alex could always just do nothing about Bakuda and leave Brockton Bay, but that carried its own problems. For one, he was extremely knowledgeable of the Bay and its parahumans by now, which was an enormous advantage. If he uprooted and went to, say, Boston, he'd be forced to adapt and face whatever unknown countermeasures that the local parahumans had put in place to prevent incursions.

Another issue was that Brockton Bay's enormously disproportionate villain population was excellent camouflage that wouldn't necessarily be present elsewhere. The local Protectorate presence was very small in comparison to Boston's or New York's, and the heroes were notably short of problematic Thinkers. That was bad for Brockton Bay, but definitely good for Alex's secrecy.

If he was being honest with himself, though, the real reason Alex didn't vamoose was because he _wanted_ to be here. Maybe it was Lung's influence, or maybe he was just naturally territorial, but Alex felt like this exemplar of urban decay and socioeconomic malaise was his home, his _property._ He wasn't about to give it up lightly, and definitely not for Bakuda.

Oni Lee was another gigantic problem Alex couldn't afford to overlook, though. When she first joined the ABB, Bakuda had been ecstatic about the idea of outfitting a reusable suicide bomber with her Tinker creations, but Lung had vetoed it except in extreme circumstances. Now that she was in charge, it would be wise to assume Oni Lee's already-considerable lethality had gone up tenfold. Alex didn't really have a set counter to Oni Lee's teleporting clones in his own powerset—he was fast, sure, but Oni Lee had honed his agility and reflexes to the human limit, and he could be anywhere in his line of sight in little more time than it took to blink.

Depending on the kinds of bombs Bakuda outfitted Oni Lee with, it wouldn't even take a slow battle of attrition for Oni Lee to bomb Alex into smithereens. It might just take one shot, one which he couldn't possibly defend against. He needed to deal with Oni Lee in an unexpected way, force an engagement that the teleporter would be naturally disadvantaged in.

Oni Lee's power wasn't without its weaknesses. He required line of sight, so blinding him or occluding his vision would disable his power. His power wasn't instantaneous, so there was a brief window of roughly a second when he was vulnerable before teleporting again and leaving behind a clone. He was also unable to prevent anything within a few centimeters of his skin from teleporting along with him—Lung had learned that when he set Oni Lee on fire, and he hadn't been able to leave behind his burning clothes when he teleported.

That incident gave Alex an idea. Of all people, that guileless wannabe heroine he'd fleeced might be one of the few who had a power capable of taking both Bakuda and Oni Lee down from a safe distance, since she didn't need line of sight like Oni Lee did. It would be priceless if the ABB's hostility ended up creating the very alliance of powers that was needed to take down all three of the gang's unusually synergistic capes. The irony was rich, and it made a slow smile spread across Alex's face.

First, Alex needed to call in Taylor's favor. Then, he'd test her to see if her power was all it was cracked up to be, and whip her into shape if it wasn't. After that, he'd give the ABB a taste of their own medicine when it came to unfair power combinations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have the last main chapter of the arc, in which Bakuda graduates from being an annoyance to topping the list of Alex's Most Wanted. Coming up next is the final arc interlude, starring Armsmaster!


	16. Incubation 2.A

**Infection 2.A**

Colin startled awake at his desk, jolting forward so quickly that he nearly smacked his forehead into the computer monitor.

 _Damn it,_ he thought, regretting the moment he made the mistake of leaning back in his chair to rest his eyes and think.

He blinked several times, and it took his eyes an annoyingly long time to focus enough to read the computer's clock readout. Not for the first time, Colin considered designs that would fix that, and promptly discarded them for later.

It was 1:27 AM. God, he'd wasted over two hours and forty minutes, and during such a crucial time of day, no less—he didn't have any Wards or Protectorate heroes to manage at this hour. He should never have accepted an office chair that reclined when he leaned back; that was a pernicious comfort trap.

Colin looked over the windows that were open on his computer, picking up where he'd left off.

In the upper left corner, a window with fourteen tabs, all dedicated to designs for integrating a variant on Clockblocker's temporal stasis into his halberd without draining the battery completely in two or three shots. Busy work, a Tinker project he could juggle easily and come back to whenever an idea struck. It was there more for the sake of channeling his procrastination, a semi-productive way to keep his mind sharp. Counterintuitively, it made him more productive in total than focusing all his effort on one task for a long time.

In the middle, taking prominence, was the digital file detailing the huge wave of murders, kidnappings, arsons, and shootings that had inexplicably struck the already crime-riddled city in the last three days.

Lastly, tucked away neatly into the upper right-hand corner, there was a window that was completely black. Colin felt a small twinge of betrayal at the sight. The last he remembered, he'd been talking with Dragon about useful ways to reroute waste heat in her larger combat mechs. If her window was still open, then that meant she must have let him fall asleep, then gone on to do something else.

"Dragon?" Colin said hoarsely, clearing his dry throat.

A moment later, the dark-haired woman's face appeared in the previously black window. Colin knew she might look nothing like this avatar, the digital equivalent of wearing a mask, but the features and expressions were lifelike enough to fool most people, and it ultimately made no difference to him. Dragon had triggered after Leviathan had sunk her native island of Newfoundland, and she had become agoraphobic as a result. It didn't stop her from being the best Tinker in the world, nor did Colin hold that title against her, even as he adamantly pursued a different, more conventional heroic career that Dragon often went out of her way to assist with.

She did, however, have the unfortunate habit of trying to nanny him. It was as exasperating as it was endearing.

Dragon smiled apologetically. "I'm here, Colin. Sorry I didn't speak up, but you _needed_ to rest. You've been up for nearly three days straight. I'm worried about you."

Colin bit back his first defensive response. Dragon had been blessed to be a Noctis cape, a parahuman that never needed to sleep. Pointing that out would only sound like petulant jealousy, even though Colin _was_ admittedly jealous. Colin sat back, rubbing at his eyes. "I know. It's just been one thing after another lately, and this rash of missing persons has really gotten under my skin."

"I understand how you feel," Dragon said guardedly. "Before we talk about that, though, you should know that Miss Militia and Velocity were dispatched to the scene of an attack."

Colin was standing halfway out of his chair before Dragon had even finished her sentence. _"_ _What!?_ Where? Why didn't you or my team wake me?!"

Dragon sighed. "The team didn't wake you because it was already over by the time the Protectorate and Guild were notified by the FAA and Air Force."

"The _Air Force?_ What happened?" Colin said, equally appalled and incredulous.

"The Brockton Bay Airport was hit by the Merchants," Dragon said quickly. "Skidmark led Mush and eight armed gang members to attack the terminal as a distraction, while Squealer used some kind of modified semi truck to smash through the security fence and grab whole aircraft and parts with giant hydraulic arms. Four people needed to be taken to the hospital for minor to moderate injuries, but two pilots—Captain Kathryn McCallister and First Officer Roger Wood—are still missing. It's presumed that they're either going to be held for later ransom, or they're being used as hostages."

"Knowing the Merchants, they'll be forcibly addicted to a cocktail of God-knows-what, and that's if we get them back at all," Armsmaster muttered darkly.

"I'm cautiously optimistic. The Merchants don't seem to be aiming to kill anyone; their primary goal was to hijack aircraft and steal parts for Squealer to use," said Dragon as images and video flashed in front of the monitors. "The damaged or stolen aircraft include two Embraer 135 regional airliners, a Short 330 mail carrier, a Cessna Citation private jet, two Bell 407 helicopters, and a Lockheed P-792 medium freighter. I don't have the _slightest_ idea how Squealer managed to escape undetected, but I think it's safe to assume from the jamming and the gaps in the footage that she's come up with some sort of powerful medium-range stealth modification."

Colin flipped through the highlights and stills of the security camera footage, his eyebrows lifting in shock. In one instant, there was a gigantic Tinker creation wreaking absolute havoc in an aircraft hangar, and in the next, it was as if the metal abomination had driven past the camera's view into an invisible tunnel, leaving the hangar suddenly empty save for the savaged carcasses of a few aircraft. "Good God. This is _tens of millions_ of dollars of damage, even just counting the aircraft. How could this even happen? Squealer is one of the lowest-rated pure Tinkers we have on record. She's usually too strung out on meth to do anything except obsessively rebuild and modify the same vehicles over and over, and I've never seen— _Jesus,_ is that a _backhoe?_ Skidmark must have something incredible to gain, if he thinks a high-profile move like this will be worth the risk."

"Or maybe he has something to fear," Dragon added. "Skidmark has better survival instincts than his bad habits would suggest."

Colin scowled. "That's a low bar if ever there was one. Still, I'm going to petition to have Squealer's Tinker 2 rating raised in light of this. It's overdue. I'm thinking Tinker 5, considering her restrictive specialty. A single squad or trained hero should be able to handle her, if they're given the appropriate countermeasures."

"I concur," Dragon said. "Better to err on the side of caution. There's no telling what she has planned for all those parts and aircraft."

A thought hit Colin then, and he slumped in his chair, massaging his temples. "The mayor is going to be apoplectic. And the media, and the Director. They're going to blame _me,_ of course. Why did those worthless junkies have to choose _now_ of all times to grow a spine?"

Dragon shrugged helplessly. "I'm as mystified as you. The Merchants have always been a distant fourth behind the Empire Eighty-Eight, the ABB, and the mercenary groups, if you even count the latter as villain gangs. I don't think you or anyone could have—"

Dragon was interrupted by the beeping alert from the computer. "What was that?" she asked.

Colin opened the alert, scanning it quickly. "It's a message from Deputy Director Renick. The BBPD has ruled the situation at the Eagle's Nest a double homicide, and their forensics team is saying there was likely parahuman involvement. He wants me to head over there right now, apparently there's a problem with the crime scene and he wants me to take scans right away before any trace evidence is lost."

Colin stood from his chair, already moving to his armor rack to suit up. He chose the loadout with the most sensors built in. "I'll contact you later, Dragon."

"Good luck," she said, and closed her window.

Colin managed to suit up in his power armor in nearly record time. He was out of the Protectorate headquarters by just after 2 AM. He'd opted for the slightly more multipurpose full-face helmet because it was night and he didn't have to be as concerned about PR, and shortly after departing he was glad he did so. It was lightly drizzling, as the low clouds overhead had been threatening to do for the last day, and although the rain was dreary, it was largely not a problem for his waterproof armor and hydrophobic visor.

Colin, now in his guise as Armsmaster, slid through the sparse night traffic on his gyro-stabilized motorcycle, letting the software do most of the driving while he concentrated on trying not to nod off again. The mild stimulant he'd taken before leaving had yet to kick in fully.

Armsmaster caught sight of three cop cars outside of the bar just as the bike automatically slowed, the regenerative braking smoothly converting kinetic energy into electricity that flowed back into the battery. Armsmaster manually steered the motorcycle up to the curb.

The Eagle's Nest was so obviously an Empire Eighty-Eight bar that Armsmaster was genuinely confused as to why the Nazis even bothered with the paper-thin pretense of deniability. The building was gray and nondescript, but the bottom two stories were decorated with a red neon sign depicting an angular Art Deco eagle with talons outstretched to grasp an iron cross, wings spread over the name 'Eagle's Nest.' At least in Brockton Bay, the iron cross was functionally a swastika with fewer angles, and the connection to Nazi eagle iconography was blindingly obvious.

Despite the late hour, rain, and police presence, the bar was apparently still open for some reason. The front door opened as a man in a biker vest stepped out, caught sight of Armsmaster, immediately turned on his heel, and went right back in. Armsmaster could see a moderately-sized throng of people inside, and from the brief glimpse it looked like some kind of rally was going on.

Feeling wary, Armsmaster dismounted from his bike, grabbing his halberd from its dedicated holster, and walked to the other side of the building, where police tape had cordoned off the alley. The police and forensics had already set up spotlights to supplement the headlights from their cars and the ominous glow from the red neon sign, and a single cop in a rain poncho was speaking into a walkie-talkie, clearly trying to project control over the situation that wasn't there. The BBPD had been run ragged lately, and even under the best of circumstances, they often couldn't spare more than a handful of cops even for volatile situations like this.

Armsmaster reached the police tape cordon, and with the alley now fully in view, it became obvious what the problem with the crime scene was.

There was a little pavilion area with an overhang jutting out from the bar, which had been partially cordoned off by a seven-foot-tall fence of opaque plastic sheeting strung between collapsible poles, which also held up a large tent. A few police and forensic technicians were nearby, clad in baggy, white plastic scrubs and blue plastic shoe covers, and all of them were fighting a losing battle, trying to create an improvised levee to stop the rain from washing away evidence. Unfortunately, the alley's pavement sagged toward the middle, creating a natural drainage that ran straight through the crime scene. More spotlights had been set up around the scene, giving everything a harsh halogen glare with too many pale shadows.

Armsmaster raised up the police tape to pass beneath it. Already, he could smell blood and death from here.

"Well, well, look who got here all alone and only forty minutes late," came a raspy, unpleasant female voice that Armsmaster had dearly hoped never to hear again.

Detective Angela Emerson strode up, her partner Kwon Lee-suk in tow. The middle-aged, ginger-haired detective was looking gray and sickly, with dark bags under her eyes and her puffy blue police jacket zipped up to her chin. Detective Kwon wasn't looking much better, looming behind his diminutive partner with a hard, dark look on his blocky face, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his black, hooded raincoat.

Armsmaster suppressed a sigh, wondering what he could say to get his intolerable police department nemeses to go away in the least amount of time. The BBPD higher-ups had no doubt banished these two out here because they were on the very bottom of the totem pole, and Detective Kwon's nearly unique racial minority status in the department was often used to give the appearance of legitimacy to investigations involving the Empire, after years of corruption scandals in the department.

"Show me the bodies." Armsmaster said without preamble.

Emerson jabbed a thumb over her shoulder, indicating down the alley. "Calling 'em 'bodies' anymore would be an overstatement. Might want to hold your breath, _superhero_. Wouldn't want to spew all over your shiny breastplate."

Armsmaster ignored her jibe and walked further into the alley. As he approached the pavilion, the abattoir stench got progressively worse until it became something unfathomable. The coppery, congealing blood, rank shit and cloying vomit was so thick in the air it seemed to overwhelm his nose and coat his tongue, even though it was raining and he was keeping his mouth tightly closed. Armsmaster's stomach gave an unsteady lurch, his throat clenching involuntarily, so he swallowed his gorge and paused to activate the air seal on his full-face helmet.

A polymer band sealed around his neck and connected to his armor with a hiss and soft _click_. Gloriously sterile, faintly metallic-smelling air circulated. It would limit his head's range of movement somewhat, which was bothersome, but it was necessary to create an airtight seal, and he'd gladly trade that for relief from the rotting stench.

Emerson, who'd stopped to see what had held Armsmaster up, simply glared and pressed a handkerchief to her nose and mouth. Her partner produced a blue hospital mask and fitted it over himself.

"Talk to me. What prompted you to rule this case parahuman-related and turn it over to the PRT?" Armsmaster asked, his voice still ringing out clearly and without distortions thanks to the speakers built into his helmet.

Kwon started to say something but coughed and nearly retched, holding on to his hospital mask as he parted the plastic sheeting to let Emerson go past him. Kwon swallowed heavily and regained his composure. "Guh, Jesus _Christ_ that's foul. Anyway, we thought this might have been a stabbing or a violent kidnapping at first, but the lab techs found too much blood and too many bone fragments for the victims to have survived. After, uh, talking to the bar patrons, and reviewing the security camera footage that covers the mouth of the alley, there's no possible way the victims or their bodies could have been taken anywhere without powers. This is all that's left of them."

Armsmaster followed the detectives past the barrier that had been erected, and beheld the remains, which had been almost entirely liquid in nature. The pools of tacky slurry had run down the little smoking area and spread to encompass nearly the entire breadth of the alley, intermixing to the point where it was impossible to tell where one pool ended and the other began. The pool had been slowly coagulating and congealing over the past day, so it now had a hardened skin over the surface, where it wasn't being slowly eroded away by the water. There were also various solid fragments, most unidentifiable, others clearly bits of flesh, bone, teeth, and clothing.

There was something blue in the midst of all the red, and on closer inspection, Armsmaster discovered it was a piece of an eyeball staring blindly up at him.

Armsmaster's blood ran cold, and his stomach lurched. In an instant, he was no longer looking at what was merely a foul, abstract red puddle, he was looking at what was left of _two human beings_. With that tiny change in his pattern recognition, his instinctual empathy came to the forefront, bringing with it a mixture of horror, disgust, sadness, and anger. That was the moment Armsmaster knew that whoever did this must have been empty inside. No one could have done such a thing to another person without lacking some key piece of their soul.

Armsmaster carefully walked around to the pavilion smoking area, which had a segment of roof to protect it from the rain far better than the police's improvised measures. He knelt at the edge of a pool and touched his right index finger to it.

"The _fuck_ are you doing!?" Emerson yelled. "Are you—are you just _poking_ the evidence!?"

"Calm down, I have a molecular scanner built into my gauntlets. Give me a moment," Armsmaster said, watching as the readout began on his helmet's display. He tried to parse the countless readouts he was getting over his helmet visor's display, but his power didn't allow him to understand scientific concepts, only build things—in fact, he was among the few Tinkers who went out of their way to educate themselves on science and engineering, but that didn't mean biology was his forte, and he certainly couldn't match Dragon's expertise or practical ability in that area. It was a bit like a layperson trying to interpret what a painting looked like by reading a graph of light wavelengths. He could get a vague intellectual impression, but he couldn't see the picture.

Frustrated, Armsmaster used his more exotic sensor suite, taking in data from sensors across all his systems in all the tech he wore and carried. A full sweep, searching for any lingering traces of physical, spatial, or temporal anomalies.

Nothing. No signs that any powers had been used in the area. No abnormal radiation signatures, no electromagnetic disruptions, _nothing_. Not every power left detectable traces in its wake, perhaps not even most, but it was still disheartening.

"I hate it when he spaces out like this." Emerson said, not even bothering to do so _sotto voce_.

"So? Did you find anything?" Kwon asked, seemingly trying to compensate for his partner's rudeness.

Armsmaster tilted his head. "Incredible pressures or extreme centrifugal forces might have been responsible for this kind of damage, but I'm not finding any traces of lingering Shaker effects or any other powers at work. This was no conventional grenade or explosive."

"No shit, Sherlock. Like we said, no one heard anything, and the only damage here was done to the victims." Emerson said peevishly.

Armsmaster felt the last thread of his fraying patience snap. "You're not needed, you useless little _pest_. This case is no longer yours. Are you just here to annoy me with your stupidity and incredibly juvenile insults? Is that it? I'm the head of the Protectorate East-North-East, and you two aren't even fit to be rent-a-cops." Armsmaster said, his voice dripping with contempt.

Emerson's face grew red and blotchy with rage. "You expect us to turn over this entire crime scene to you? What kind of amateur Keystone Kops shit is this? Who's gonna preserve the evidence, huh? Who's gonna ride herd on the fucking Fourth Reich in the bar? _You,_ all by yourself, while you trample evidence and bulldoze your way through protocol? Give me a _fucking_ break! You're not a detective, you're not even a cop! You're just a know-nothing _asshole_ pretender in a tin can!"

"If you can't make yourselves useful, then fucking _leave!"_ Armsmaster shouted back, pointing away with his halberd for emphasis.

Detective Kwon tried to put his hand on Emerson's shoulder to quell her, but she shrugged him off angrily. "Get off of—get _off_ me, Lee-suk! No! I don't have to take this shit from this arrogant lobcock! God _damn_ it!"

The police and forensic technicians had paused their work to watch as Detective Emerson stormed off with Detective Kwon following in concern, both of them no doubt going off somewhere else to make trouble for Armsmaster somewhere down the line. His anger fled quickly, replaced by weariness. Armsmaster didn't appreciate being made into a spectacle in front of the BBPD, but at the very least, the detectives would be out of Armsmaster's hair for the time being.

Without sparing the two another thought, Armsmaster returned his attention to the evidence, looking for a trail to follow. He paced around the harshly-lit crime scene, examining the evidence with his own two eyes and his helmet's HUD.

There were several sets of bloody footprints leading from the puddle, already carefully delineated with little green plastic markers, and all but one of the sets of footprints were leading to the door to the Eagle's nest.

The anomalous set of footprints led further into the alley, and the tread pattern wasn't defined enough to identify, but their size and shape roughly matched that of a man's shoe. This was actually an outstanding discovery, as it narrowed the potential pool of suspects by more than half. Most parahumans were female, after all. It was something worthy to bring to a trial.

Unfortunately, the footprints stopped with unnatural rapidity, suggesting the fluid had either been subjected to some kind of hydrophobic agent, or had been absorbed somehow. The trail ran cold after going just fifteen feet, after which time the parahuman had presumably climbed, flown, jumped, shrunk, transformed, turned invisible, phased, timeskipped, or teleported away.

Just like the alley, Armsmaster's investigation came to a dead end there. Time had been of the essence in getting here, or so he'd thought, but the trail had already gone cold. The bitter, crushing weight of failure settled over him. Emerson may have been a disgrace of a detective, but she was right in one thing—he really _couldn't_ do this alone. He'd been running and running for _days_ now, not even to any parahuman fights or engagements, always too little, too late. He could practically see his own career careening in a downward spiral, along with the city.

While Armsmaster waited for a PRT van filled with new personnel to arrive, he activated the private communications function of his helmet with a few eye gestures, and sent over his scanner's biological readouts to Dragon for examination when she had the time.

As soon as the van arrived, Armsmaster got back on his motorcycle and returned to the Protectorate headquarters. Colin had barely finished stripping off his armor and replacing it on the armor rack before the true measure of his exhaustion caught up with him, and unable to do anything else, he collapsed onto his well-used office couch and fell unconscious.

Colin was completely unaware of the passage of time while he was passed out on the couch, but when he began waking up, he did so in stages rather than all at once, and that was never a good sign.

First, he became aware of his discomfort. His tight clothes, made to fit under his armor, had bunched up weirdly in the night. Then, he became aware of his unbearably dry throat. At last, his mind slowly ground into motion, and he forced himself up, forced his heavy eyes to open.

5:53 AM. He'd gotten one and a half more hours of sleep, give or take. It said something about his state that he didn't particularly care about the lost time, anymore.

After shuffling off to the attached bathroom in his office to relieve himself and splash some water into his face in the hopes it would be invigorating, Colin sat back at his desk and turned on the computer. A message from Dragon was the first thing he saw, a non-urgent but high priority message requesting a call when he was awake.

Colin called her, and as usual, she picked up in moments despite the countless other things she was no doubt juggling, her avatar appearing as it always did.

"Colin? Are you all right?" Dragon asked in concern.

Colin smirked slightly in spite of himself. If that was what she was leading with, he must have looked even worse than he thought. "I'm fine. Just slept in my clothes. Did you get a chance to look over the scans I sent you?"

Dragon paused for a few moments, her expression turning grave. "I did. The sample's composition is a mix of blood, intracellular fluid, interstitial fluid, stomach contents, bile, urine, feces, spinal fluid, lymph, and miscellaneous trace fluids. At first, it seemed all the contents were consistent with human bodies and nothing more. But... this is strange."

"What did you find?" Colin asked, leaning forwards.

"I thought there was some environmental contamination from other organisms, so I took a closer look and ran a full sequencing and reconstruction, but it was all one genetic profile. There were massive, seemingly random insertions of foreign DNA in the genome, but they were consistent from cell to cell, so they couldn't be the result of contamination," said Dragon, bringing up a table of p-values and statistical tests in place of her avatar. "I've tentatively identified most of the insertions as other segments of human DNA, seemingly from different people, and also DNA from various bacteria, viruses, fungi, animals, and plants. But there's more."

"Go on."

Dragon's voice grew hushed. "Colin, this DNA was almost completely acetylated."

"I'm unfamiliar with the term," said Colin, feeling another pang of frustration.

"Many regions of DNA are not meant to be activated at the same time. That's why you have different types of cells, even though all your cells have the exact same DNA. The feedback loops, triggers, and cyclical processes in biochemistry interact with DNA a bit like a computer, with transistors and logic gates that switch on and off to give different responses to different situations," Dragon explained.

Colin nodded. "All right, I follow. So in what ways would this DNA behave differently from normal?"

"Colin, these mutations are _horrific_. At first I thought it was just part of whatever degradation process afflicted the cells, but my reconstructions have put out the same result every time I run them, and the DNA sequencing confirms it. I've never seen horizontal gene transfer like this. Even specialized biotinkers like Blasto only mix organisms together with some kind of straightforward purpose to their designs, but this? It's _fiendishly_ complex, almost like a genuine organic system instead of an artificially created one, but it makes no biological _sense_. I don't understand how any organism can even be _alive_ with so many parts of its chimeric genetic code activated simultaneously." Dragon said, sounding almost more exasperated than Colin could ever remember hearing her.

"Maybe that's only part of the picture," Colin speculated. "Maybe it makes sense, but only in the context of a piece we're missing."

"There was trace evidence of a different organism, but it was only a few fragments that were extremely degraded. Whatever else might be attached to these cells, something with DNA this corrupted couldn't possibly survive as its own independent organism, not even on a cellular level," Dragon stated with total confidence.

Colin frowned, trying to understand the implications. "Any other clues besides that?"

"Yes. It was as if the traces of those other, degraded cells had all lost the ability to self-regulate and devoured themselves. In the few usable data points I found, the most notable discoveries were several unknown proteins and enzymes, some extremely long and complicated carbon nanostructures, and massively disproportionate levels of iron oxide and Uracil." Dragon reported.

Colin shook his head. "I understand the iron oxide, but what's the significance of Uracil?"

"It's a nucleotide. DNA has four base pairs: Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine, and Thymine. Uracil is the pyrimidine counterpart to Thymine that's used in RNA." Dragon said.

Colin spread his arms wide. "If there's a broader logic to this puzzle, I can't understand where all the pieces fit."

Dragon's avatar blinked back on, and she grimaced. "I'm sorry. It's not very conclusive, I know. Really, I can only say what my instincts are telling me. This whole mess reminds me of what's left behind from Bonesaw's unique brand of nano-organic engineering."

Colin froze at the name, every hair on his body standing on end. "Do you think it _is_ her? Are the Nine _here,_ in my city?"

Dragon shook her head firmly. "No. I don't think the Slaughterhouse Nine or any of their creations are in Brockton Bay. If I'd thought there was even a 5% chance of that, I'd have sounded the alarm immediately. I'm only saying that's what this looks _most similar_ to. If I had to guess, Colin, what you have on your hands is the work of a Tinker."

"That's what worries me," Colin mused. "The only local villainous Tinkers who could have pulled off something like this are Leet and Bakuda, and it's obviously not Leet, but Bakuda doesn't quite fit either. This sounds more like the work of a biotinker, and Bakuda's specialization seems to be bombs."

"I wouldn't count any possibility out at this point," Dragon cautioned. "That's just my own theory, and I don't even know for sure if this _is_ a byproduct of Tinkertech. It's entirely possible Bakuda has the ability to build things outside her specialty, or perhaps this is someone entirely new."

"That's a disturbing thought. I'll give top priority to finding any signs of new Tinkers raiding tech or supplies in the area," said Colin, quickly typing out a memo and sending it. "Thank you for all your help, Dragon. You really went the extra mile on this one."

Dragon smiled at him, but it seemed a little sad, a little weary. "Anytime, Colin, you know that. One last thing before I go, though—I need you to make me a promise."

Colin sat up a little straighter, his heart giving an uncomfortable lurch. "What is it?"

"Promise me that you'll eat something and then go back to sleep." Dragon said flatly, her uncharacteristic tone brooking no refusal.

Ordinarily, Colin would have chafed at the request. This time, however, he just laughed. Even when it was all going wrong, at least he had one person looking out for him. "All right. You win. I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Armsmaster and Dragon are on the case! This doesn't bode well for a certain former genetic engineer. Also, it just wouldn't be Armsmaster if he didn't let his workaholic stress eventually get to him and make him blow up at someone in that weirdly condescending way he does. It didn't happen to Taylor, this time, so that pressure had to be let off somewhere.
> 
> Also, I'm well aware the Merchants didn't attack the airport until later in canon, but remember, butterflies abound. We'll see more of what they're up to later.


	17. Inflammation 3.1

**Inflammation 3.1**

I woke up before my alarm clock, again.

At least this time I had gotten to bed at a decent hour. My dealings with the Undersiders and Alex really drove home the lesson that sleeplessness was a dangerous condition for an aspiring superhero.

I could hear the shower running, so for lack of anything else to do, I reached under my bed and slid out the messenger bag I'd decided to use for what I considered my 'non-suspicious' hero paraphernalia. After hiding the lunchbox with the remaining money in the coal chute, I'd realized it was a bad idea to keep all my eggs in one basket, or rather, backpack. The contraband, such as my costume and illegal money, was kept in the most secret places I could manage, while my notebooks written in cypher, pepper spray, other various hero supplies, and cell phone were relegated to the messenger bag.

The cell phone, as it turned out, had logged a text message while I was asleep.

Alex: found something important. Go to the usual meeting place tomorrow morning. Contact me as soon as you get there.

I felt a cold lump of apprehension form in the pit of my stomach as I read and re-read the ominous message. I double-checked my alarm clock. Six twenty-seven. If I had breakfast now and told Dad I was just going to take my morning run to get to the school, I'd be able to catch the bus and get to the library in good time. Depending on how long it took, I'd definitely miss homeroom and maybe second period, though. Possibly the whole day if this was something really serious.

 _Then again,_ I reasoned, _if it's something really serious, it wouldn't matter that I missed school._

What could Alex have found? I had a sinking feeling it might have something to do with the Undersiders, and Lisa's threat against me after seeing their faces. At least I had Alex in my corner, and I could swallow my pride and call Armsmaster if things got _really_ out of hand.

That thought eased the knot of tension inside me a little. It was a strange feeling, being able to rely on _Armsmaster_ of all people. Even if he was a contact of absolutely last resort given that I had something to prove to him, it was still incredible I even had anything to do with him whatsoever.

I sent Alex a text while waiting for Dad to finish in the shower.

Me: Message received. I'll try to make my way over within an hour.

A few seconds after I sent the text, a new one arrived.

Alex: Be discreet, but don't keep me waiting.

I huffed out a breath and stowed the phone safely away. Alex was being a jerk, so in other words, all must be normal on his end.

I wondered about that. How was I getting used to his awful personality so quickly? As demanding and rude as Alex was, I didn't feel like he was bullying me, even though it really seemed like I _should_ have felt that way, just on the face of it. Why did his horrible behavior feel so different from the likes of Emma, Madison, and Sophia?

Well, for starters, unlike the masters of social manipulation that were Emma and Madison, Alex clearly had _zero_ people skills. There was something oddly refreshing about dealing with someone who was so transparently motivated by self-interest. Alex didn't even pretend to be friendly like those two-faced bitches did, often hiding their insults and barbs behind a paper-thin veneer of plausible deniability.

More importantly, when I talked with Alex, it felt like we were both players in a game of chess, and even though he won most of the matches, he still took me seriously as an opponent, and did his utmost to try to outwit me. Maybe it was just him being paranoid, but in an odd kind of way, his wariness and distrust was flattering. With the bullies, it was just the opposite. No matter the extravagant efforts they put into making my life miserable, they always hypocritically pretended like I wasn't even worthy of their contempt.

With all that going on, was it any wonder I wanted to meet Alex for important hero business rather than go to school? I set about making my preparations.

Fortunately, Dad bought my excuse about wanting to go directly to school easily enough. At least, if he thought there was anything incongruous about it, he didn't want to bring it up. I wore my costume under my clothes just in case, with the upper half tied around my waist in a way I hoped wouldn't be too noticeable under my layers, and I left behind my first and second period textbooks to lighten my backpack a little, and make room for some of the hero supplies from my messenger bag. With that all squared away, I made my way to the bus stop for the line that would take me to the library.

Truancy still made me feel uncomfortable, no matter how I justified it. I felt like everyone on the bus could read the guilt on my face, even though I knew intellectually that no one cared or probably even noticed that the bus wasn't headed near any schools.

As the bus approached the library, my power's senses lit up with the sudden appearance of Alex within my range. As was growing to be my habit, I left the details of his body and senses vague.

I got off the bus and looked to where Alex was standing. Surprisingly, he wasn't at the steps of the library or hanging around the building, he was actually across the street in front of a donut shop.

I did a double-take. There was nobody else around, the few other customers of the donut shop were all inside to escape the early-morning chill. My power was telling me exactly where Alex was, but this wasn't Alex.

The stranger was a nondescript, brown-haired white guy who looked like he was in his early twenties. He was dressed in a blue, unbuttoned plaid long-sleeve shirt with a black band T-shirt underneath, and both looked woefully inadequate for the morning cold. He was carrying a large bag of donuts, mechanically and efficiently wolfing down one after another without pause, heedless of the red jam getting on his hands and mouth. The way he was eating was kind of bizarre, especially considering he didn't even seem to be enjoying the donuts very much as he was scarfing them down. As I crossed the street to approach, his brown eyes turned to me.

"Alex?" I said uncertainly. "That is you, right?"

The guy's face scrunched up in distaste. "Are you talking to me?" he asked in a smooth, Boston-accented tenor that was nothing like Alex's gravely voice.

"Yes?" I said, feeling confused and painfully awkward. My power was telling me one thing, but my eyes and ears were telling me something entirely different. Was it possible my power could react to more than one person? No, this was too much of a coincidence.

"Look, girl, I'm not buying whatever it is you're selling. Go try this routine on someone else, okay? It's too early in the morning for this shit," the guy said, pointedly turning away and fishing out another donut from his bag.

I blinked. Okay, this was definitely shaking my confidence. This guy's appearance, voice, accent, and even his body language were nothing like Alex's. Still, a part of me refused to fall for another of Alex's tricks again.

"I know it's you, Alex. You can drop the act," I said, trying to project confidence.

The guy was starting to get visibly annoyed. He scrubbed his face and hands with a napkin, then crumpled up his now-empty bag of donuts and threw it in a nearby trash bin with unnecessary force. "Don't you have somewhere else to be? I'm not playing this game."

I stood my ground. "No. You're not fooling me."

The guy's expression flashed with anger. His bearing changed, and suddenly I could see Alex in the low, tense way he held himself, and the cold, calculating look he gave me.

"Didn't I tell you to be _discreet?"_ Not-Alex quietly hissed through clenched teeth, his Boston accent suddenly gone. "And how in the _blue hell_ do you always know where I am, even in disguise?!"

I frantically cast about for a plausible explanation. "I told you. I can sense things through my bugs. You're different than everyone else to my bugs' senses."

Alex _tched_ in annoyance. "Whatever. I was hoping to tell you to meet me somewhere else when you got here, but now we need to have a talk. Follow me."

"What's with the, uh, cloak-and-dagger routine?" I asked, hurrying to follow as Alex broke into a brisk walk.

"Cell phones and text messages can be tracked, and there are security cameras all around the library. I don't want to burn my civilian identity, and neither should you." Alex said gruffly. It was _indescribably_ bizarre hearing his words and manner of speaking coming from another voice, I had no idea that a person's vocal fingerprint was so distinctive.

I kept silent as Alex led me down the block, turning on to a side street behind a barbecue restaurant.

"There should be nobody nearby to hear us," Alex said, looking around. "Double-check with your bugs, just to be sure."

I did so, not wanting to fail to deliver right after claiming I could tell where he was through my bugs. There were a few people around, but none in the restaurant and none close enough to hear us.

"We're clear. Why do you look different? Are you hiding or something?" I asked, gesturing vaguely at Alex.

Alex gave me a sour look. "I was hoping to pass this body off as a messenger of mine to give you directions so I could meet you at a secure secondary location in my normal form. That's not important, though. It's a _disaster_ that you were able to see through my disguise. That's _confidential,_ do you understand?"

I nodded. "I won't tell anyone, I swear," I assured him.

Alex shook his head agitatedly. "Not good enough! I need to be convinced you really understand the severity of this. My Changer ability is an _advantage,_ and that advantage is lost the second it gets out, if it hasn't already. That means neither of us can benefit from my ability if you talk."

"I _do_ understand," I insisted. "They say three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. I get it. I won't tell anyone. Believe me, I'm used to keeping secrets—I keep all my journals written in a cypher, and you're the only one that knows I'm a cape, even after three months."

Alex's eyes narrowed. "And you _volunteered_ that blackmail-worthy material to me. You were ready to try infiltrating a team with a fucking _Thinker_ on it. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in your secret-keeping ability."

I felt my face grow heated in embarrassment and anger at Alex's words. "I only told you because I already knew your identity! I only wanted you to _trust_ me, I'm not stupid. As for the undercover thing, I changed my mind about that. I _know_ the risk Tattletale represents, now. I didn't tell you the other day, but after we met, I called her to turn down their offer, and she threatened me over the phone. She used her power to know things she shouldn't be able to know. It was _terrifying_. She said if I rat them out, she'll know, and respond in kind. I've been thinking about that constantly since then, how close I came to getting hurt, or worse. I'm always watching what I say now, even to Armsmaster. I haven't even told the _top hero in the city_ anything but your cape name."

Alex's anger seemed to abate slightly at that. "That's a start, but remember what I told you: _trust no one_. If you tell someone a secret, you're not just trusting them, you're trusting whoever they trust enough to tell, and then it becomes public knowledge. I mean it, if you tell _anyone_ —your parents, your best friend, your priest, your boyfriend, whoever—then our deal is off, and I _will_ make you regret it. Are we clear?"

I blew out a sigh, running my hand through my hair. "Yes. We're clear. Just to make absolutely certain, though, what exactly is this ability I'm supposed to be hiding?"

Alex gestured down at himself. "As you can see, I can change my appearance at will to look like other people."

"Useful," I said with a touch of jealousy. "So, why did you ask to meet me originally? What's this all about?"

"Bakuda," Alex said darkly. "You know who that is?"

I nodded, feeling a stirring of fear at Alex's deadly seriousness. "The ABB's new bomb tinker. Armsmaster told me about her."

Alex nodded. "I came across a guy yesterday who was being held hostage by her, and asked him a few questions. Turns out she's the one responsible for the mass kidnappings and heating up the gang war. After our fight on Sunday, she launched a coup against Lung to take over the ABB. He's missing now, probably dead at Bakuda's hands. Now she's kidnapping people left and right and planting bombs in their heads to turn them into her slaves. When they die or disobey, she blows them up."

My skin broke out in goosebumps at the thought of someone as powerful as Lung being killed, and the thought of his murderer being even worse than him. "Oh my _God_. What happened? Did you help the guy with the bomb in his head?" I asked.

Alex shook his head. "I couldn't. Bakuda's got him on a short leash. One wrong step or delay, and she detonates him remotely. This is a problem that needs to be solved at the source."

"I'm kind of surprised you care, no offense," I said hesitantly. "I thought you didn't want to get involved in the heroes-versus-villains fight."

"I _don't,"_ Alex said through clenched teeth. "Bakuda's not leaving me much choice, though. She made it personal when she decapitated me and set me on fire with one of her bombs. I wasn't even her target, I just happened to walk into a trap she'd set. This shit _cannot_ stand. If she can build exotic bombs that can take out Lung, she might be able to kill me, too. That's where _you_ come in."

"What can I do?" I asked, suddenly feeling out of my depth. Alex had mentioned being decapitated and immolated like it had been a mere slap to the face, and it made me very, very self-conscious of my own fragility.

 _"_ _You're_ the one who's constantly finding me with your bugs, so I want you to pull that same stunt on Bakuda instead. She's constantly on the move, but she's probably staying within the ABB's territory in the Docks. She's fighting like hell to expand that territory, but I doubt she'd hole up anywhere near the front lines. From what my source told me, she's got agents planting bombs and fighting her enemies all over the city, but she keeps Oni Lee close by and a few other bodyguards spaced around her. I want you to help with a grid search of ABB territory for any patterns like that." Alex explained.

"The gang controls pretty much the entire northern half of the city, though," I objected. "It would take _days_ to search it all, and that's assuming Bakuda isn't moving around to places we already checked."

"The ABB is gearing up for all-out war, there are bound to be leads we can track back to her base, or hotspots of fighting. It doesn't have to be a random search. Just off the top of my head, if you see an old brown Volkswagen van, following it to a dead-drop will probably lead back to her eventually. It belongs to the guy I met." said Alex.

"Okay, I see your point, I guess. What's the guy's name, do you know?" I asked.

"Tsuneyuki Yoshida. Goes by the nickname 'Lucky.' He's easy to spot. Gangly, Japanese, got a green streak dyed in his hair. He used to be a pot dealer before Bakuda press-ganged him." Alex listed off.

I was surprised at how effortlessly Alex was able to remember and pronounce the complicated-sounding foreign name, but I nodded. "So, how do you want to do this?"

"First, I want you to contact Armsmaster and tell him everything I told you about Bakuda. He's a powerful Tinker with tons of resources, if anyone in Brockton Bay can find a way to counteract Bakuda's techno-bullshit, then it's him. Second, I want to test how good you are with your powers. The sooner we can find Bakuda without tripping any of her traps, the better. The _last_ thing you want to give a Tinker is time to build and adapt. Are you with me on this, Taylor?" Alex asked tersely.

I thought about the offer, excitement welling up inside me. Giving Armsmaster critical information? Using my power to search for the hidden lair of a mad scientist kidnapper? It was like the beginning of every story about superheroes I'd heard as a kid, but the real thing was simultaneously more thrilling and more terrifying than I could ever have imagined.

I met Alex's cold blue eyes with my own, my heart pounding away in my chest.

"I'm in," I said decisively.

Alex gave me a tight smile. "Good. Now follow me. There's a payphone you can use to call Armsmaster nearby, and I want to take you someplace not far from there."

"Okay," I said, resisting the urge to raise an eyebrow at the last part of his vague request.

After we visited a payphone and I left Armsmaster a message relaying everything that was going on, Alex wasted no time in bringing me to his intended secondary location two streets over.

Had I not known better, I'd have been almost certain he was laying some kind of trap for me. It was an abandoned paper recycling business on the seedier outskirts of the nicer downtown area closest to the library, and it had high windows near the ceiling that would let in natural light while being high enough off the street to maintain privacy.

In other words, it brought to mind every Stranger Danger public service announcement and every awkward parent-daughter conversation about 'staying safe' from possibly predatory men. Despite that, and against all logic, I felt strangely calm, even as I went over gruesome worst-case scenarios in my mind. My calm was probably because my power felt like it was ready to seize control over Alex at any moment, but I'd never actually _tested_ that.

More importantly, for all that Alex seemed interested in fleecing me for all I was worth, he never gave me the vibe that he had any inclination to seriously _hurt_ me—which, now that I thought about it, was probably the same thing that lots of other girls thought right before they went with a stranger and were never seen again.

I stopped as we approached the side door of the building and turned to face Alex. "I'm not stepping one foot in this creepy abandoned building until you finally tell me what we're supposed to be doing here."

Alex squinted at me in annoyed confusion for a few moments before comprehension dawned on his face and he groaned, rolling his eyes. He walked past me to stand by the door. "For Christ's sake, Taylor, use your head. I wouldn't have had you call _Armsmaster_ of all fucking people to say that you're with me if I really planned on killing you to keep my secret."

The sheer bluntness of how he addressed my unspoken anxiety made me want to cringe in embarrassment, but I stood my ground. "So what is it you want to do here?" I asked.

"We're here for powers testing, or training, or whatever you want to call it. The point is, I want to know how useful you'll be in a fight against Oni Lee and Bakuda." Alex said impatiently.

I deflated slightly at that. "You can't be serious. I control _bugs_. Oni Lee can _teleport,_ and he can create countless copies of himself in the process. I can't possibly predict where he'll go, or pile enough bugs on all of his copies fast enough. If I fought him, it would be suicide."

Alex held up a finger to silence me. "Don't count yourself out just yet. There's no such thing as a _completely_ useless power. Parahuman abilities are like a giant game of rock-paper-scissors, with a million different combinations. Some can beat almost anything, others only a few, but they're _all_ useful in some circumstances, even yours."

I scoffed. I already didn't think my power was all that great, but if this was Alex's idea of cheering me up, he was failing spectacularly.

"Case in point, let me tell you a little secret I learned about Oni Lee," Alex continued with a devious smirk. "Whenever he pops up somewhere new, he carries with him every loose object within a few centimeters of his skin. That's how he brings along his clothes and weapons and the like, but it's not conscious or selective. He can't _exclude_ anything, he'll only copy it when he copies himself. The trick is actually _catching_ the squirrelly fucker in the first place. But you, with all your bugs, might have an easier time... especially if you manage to sneak a bunch of poisonous bugs on him before actually attacking."

My breath hitched. "I'd be able to bring him down in my opening attack, and keep track of him as long as he's in my range," I said wonderingly.

"Exactly," Alex said smugly, spreading his arms wide. "You need to practice that kind of takedown, though, which is where I come in. I'm fast enough to play the part of Oni Lee in a sparring match. You can use whatever powers or tools you want against me. The point is to teach you how to use your powers in a fight, that is to say, to teach you how to _cheat_. The only rule is, if I tag you, that means you're dead. Now, are you ready to get started, or not?"

I hesitated. If I was being honest with myself, I really wanted this training. All those days I'd been holding back my powers at school, fantasizing about being able to go all-out, and now Alex was offering that on a silver platter, with no actual danger or apparent drawbacks.

That was the part that made me suspicious.

I couldn't see the strings attached beyond what Alex had already explicitly laid out, though, so I nodded.

At my assent, Alex went up to the locked front door, and I watched with a mix of fascination and disgust as he casually made a motion like he was holding a key to the lock, but surreptitiously let his thumb come apart into tiny, threadlike tendrils that surged into the keyhole and effortlessly unlocked the door.

I had to admit, it was pretty damn smooth. I felt a little pang of envy that Alex had seemingly won the superpower lottery like this. Even just from the little bit I'd seen him fight, I could tell he was constantly pulling out new tricks like this, and on top of that, he could look like whatever he wanted, he was unbelievably strong, he was incredibly fast, and if his offhanded bragging was to be believed, he could even survive decapitation. I'd always known there was unfairness in powers, of course, but now I wanted a refund.

"I scoped out this place beforehand, there's no electricity, but there's also no squatters or anything," Alex said as he strode into the building. I followed behind him tentatively, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the relative darkness.

The interior of the building was less well-lit than I thought it would be by the windows near the roof. It was split into three roughly equal sections, a lowered section with garage doors where trucks used to offload on the right, a mostly-gutted raised concrete center floor in front of me, and to the left, a segment of the warehouse that had been dedicated to a sort of building-within-a-building that was probably used for office space or something.

Alex walked a ways away, then turned to face me. "Are you ready to get started?"

"Hold on, I brought my costume, just give me a minute to put it on. Aren't you going to change into a costume, too?" I asked.

Alex looked at me with a mix of offense, disgust, and reluctance, like I'd just demanded him to put on blackface and perform a minstrel show.

"Is that _really_ necessary? We're alone here," Alex said, his tone somewhere between condescending and whining.

I nodded firmly. "It's about safety. I want to get in the habit of thinking of you as Revenant, not just Alex. I don't want to slip in the middle of a fight and call you the wrong name, and a costume will help keep those two parts of you separate."

"Ugh. Fine," Alex said, waving me off. "Give me a little while to come up with a costume that doesn't make me want to die of embarrassment. I'll start with something basic. Unlike you, I'm no tailor."

"Wait, did you just use my name as a _pun?_ Are you telling me you've been hiding a sense of humor, too? Will wonders never cease?" I said in mock amazement.

"Fuck off," Alex said, without any heat to the words. He tried to hide his smile, but I could see the corners of his mouth tugging up as he turned away from me.

I rolled my eyes at Alex and got to the business of changing into my costume. I went into the office space and picked out a random dark corner to change in, which really only involved shedding some layers and moving things around. I took off my backpack, glasses, jacket, and jeans, then rolled up my costume up over my T-shirt and made sure the armor panels were all in place. By the time I walked out of the office space while pulling my mask over my eyes and negotiating my old glasses' lenses that were inset into the goggles, Alex looked completely different again.

Earlier, Alex had looked like any guy off the street, but now he was dressed all in a modified, color-swapped version of his regular outfit. His usual black leather jacket had changed color to an almost silvery gray, and was extended into more of a coat that hung about to knee-length. His pants and the unzipped hoodie he wore under his jacket had both changed color to black, and he was wearing his hood up again. Under that, his white button-up dress shirt had changed to crimson.

The biggest change was an unpainted metal mask that looked like two angular slabs of steel that had been joined together with only two rectangular eye-slits cut out. The mask was like a more brutalist version of an Ancient Greek helmet, except it didn't have the vertical opening down the front. Alternatively, it looked sort of like a crude, triangular welder's mask.

"Prepare yourself, Bug," he said, shifting to a low, balanced stance.

I drew in flying bugs from my surroundings and brought them around me in a diffuse cloud. "I'm ready, Revenant." I replied, grinning with anticipation behind my mask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the apprenticeship begin! Taylor sure is putting a lot of trust in her gut intuition over what her head is telling her, isn't she? As always, thanks for reading and reviewing!


	18. Inflammation 3.2

**Inflammation 3.2**

There was no countdown. I should have seen that coming.

The instant I'd finished speaking, Revenant lunged for me, as though my confirmation of readiness was a starting pistol. He closed the distance between us in two gigantic strides.

Startled, I brought the insects between us and tried to dodge to the side, but Revenant was already reaching for me.

I willingly didn't compensate my balance for my dodge and let it turn into a fall, ducking my head and putting my hands out like a spring to absorb the impact to my shoulders as I somewhat clumsily rolled out of the way. My power thrummed through me as I directed insects to occlude Revenant's eyes and swarm in front of his face. He swiped them away with his off-hand, but I only sent them packing into the eye-holes of his mask instead as I scrambled to my feet and ran away.

I felt a sudden _déjà vu_ for the Lung fight as Revenant's head snapped to my direction, following the sounds of my footfalls even as he was functionally blinded. Revenant dashed after me, and with a feeling of frustrated helplessness, I sensed through my bugs and my power's sense of Revenant's body as his hand reached out to roughly shove me between my shoulder blades, making me stumble a few more steps.

"Six seconds. Dead." Revenant said, seemingly unperturbed by the bugs that were still swarming around his face.

I called off the bugs, feeling embarrassed. "How could you tell where I was?" I asked.

Alex's pale blue eyes glared at me from behind his mask. "Remember when I told you I had a kind of synesthesia? That was a euphemism. I have enhanced senses, so your little blinding trick didn't cut it. That's what happens when you hold back. Against a Mover like Oni Lee, you need to hit first and hit _hard_ before he can find where you're hiding out. This piddly little cloud of gnats ain't gonna cut it. Where are the huge swarms like I saw on Sunday night? Why didn't you have them bite, or try to hit me yourself?"

"Are you serious?" I said indignantly. "This is supposed to be a sparring match, I'm not trying to actually hurt you!"

Revenant scoffed. "You're not even capable of hurting me, Bug. I can punch through solid concrete without injuring myself. Besides that, I regenerate, and if you still feel conflicted, I'll just remove my own pain receptors so that I feel none of the damage from your little bug bites. Holding back is going to win you no favors—not from me, and sure as hell not from Oni Lee. Forget about fighting fair or avoiding injury, I want you to try your damnedest to _win,_ at any cost. The best thing you did just now was going for the eyes, but even then you half-assed it, blocking my vision instead of attacking the eyes directly. You have to find weak spots and hit them first, as hard as you can. Understood?"

"I understand." I said grudgingly. "If you want me to take this seriously, then give me a minute. I need to gather my swarm, and I don't want to attract attention."

Revenant inclined his head, and I spread my awareness out to search for every bug available in my range.

To my shock, my maximum range was nearly double what it normally was. It had increased to a radius of around four city blocks.

As I gathered my swarm, it also felt like my power was more responsive, as though the bugs were somehow organizing better and responding more quickly than they normally did.

Was this the result of fighting? My power didn't just suddenly increase like this, not in the months I'd had it, so I didn't think it was the result of natural growth, like a muscle I was exercising. There had to be something else to it. Maybe this was my power's equivalent of an adrenaline rush.

Whatever this power boost was, I was going to use it to take this arrogant jackass down a peg. If he wanted a fight so badly, then I'd just have to oblige him. I'd been bottling up my Hebert family temper for long enough, maybe I could use that to my advantage.

I brought the bugs into the building through every vent, crack, and broken window. They poured in like water, quickly filling the entire factory with the buzzing drone of their wingbeats. It quickly became like the factory was filling with a dense smoke, clouding vision. Within minutes, I pulled every crawling and flying invertebrate I could find within my range to bolster my swarm, even those formerly hibernating, causing the swarm to grow in size nearly a hundred times over from what little I'd started with from inside and around the building.

"Now that's more like it!" Revenant said, raising his voice to be heard over the din of insects.

I smiled to myself. Hopefully the buzzing would put a damper on Revenant's enhanced senses and let me escape from him for longer than a few seconds. That thought brought a sudden realization I should have had sooner.

The point wasn't to take Revenant down. He told me that tagging me counted as a loss, but he didn't give me any conditions that counted as me 'winning.' He said he wanted me to try my damnedest to win, but this training was _literally_ a no-win situation for me.

Typical. I don't know why I expected any different; his whole game was _heads I win, tails you lose_. I just had to find a way to win on my own terms, then.

"I'm ready," I called out, and unlike last time, I was already moving as I said it.

I collapsed the swarm of bugs on Revenant like a giant implosion. I even had the venomous bugs attack him, though I kept them from squeezing their venom sacs.

In spite of that, Revenant still ran towards me. I bolted, running for the office space where I could hopefully lose him. My power had no blind spots, so I felt Revenant gaining on me, no doubt drawn by the sound of my footsteps even past all the buzzing, and in response I broke into an all-out sprint.

Using the positions of my bugs as a rough topographical map of my surroundings, I ran through the door and avoided the old abandoned desks and chairs, swerving around some and vaulting over others.

Behind me there was a loud _crash_ and the sound of splintering wood, and I could feel Revenant losing ground as he crashed into the unseen obstacles.

I ducked around the corner, and instead of trying to move quickly, I tried to escape as quietly as possible, relying on my costume's soft-soled, moccasin-like feet. At the same time, I made my bugs create as much noise as possible, creating a cacophony of buzzing, chirruping, and clicking.

Revenant stopped in place, reaching under his mask and scrubbing the bugs away from his face. Examining closer, I could feel Revenant's body rapidly crushing the bugs _en masse_ as they tried to enter his nose, eyes, and mouth. I felt my stomach lurch in disgust at the mental image of Revenant smashing bugs all over himself, and seemingly swallowing them as well with no compunctions whatsoever. It was a very visceral reminder his body wasn't even remotely human on the inside.

It didn't work, anyway. I only piled more bugs into him as soon as he wiped them away. Revenant seemed to figure this out, too, and he stuck out a hand and felt for the wall. He followed it, and to my dismay, made the same turn I did, herding me right into a dead end office.

My only chance was to try to dodge past Revenant and make a break for the other exit. I made the rush, keeping low and quiet, but Revenant just reached out and caught me by the arm.

"You lasted more than half a minute that time," Revenant said approvingly as I made the bugs retreat from him. "Let's go again. I think we're on to something, and I need to practice using my enhanced senses."

"Yeah," I said, already breathing hard, more from stress than from exertion. I had a feeling this was going to be an ordeal.

I was right.

Revenant insisted on countless matches, and all of them ended with me being ignominiously caught or shoved or tripped. Revenant kept this going until I was very nearly collapsing from exhaustion. To my shock, he told me it had only been half an hour when I requested a break.

Revenant was a _terrifying_ opponent to face. Even as I rapidly improved at deploying my swarms against him, they seemed to have less and less effect on him as he got used to running around blinded. He was impossible to outrun or outmaneuver. His hearing was so sensitive he could find me almost as easily when blinded, and after a few dozen matches he somehow figured out how to track me by _scent_ without even using his nose.

I told him that this was cheating, since Oni Lee didn't even have enhanced senses or the ability to just ignore my bugs, but Revenant just insisted that was the point, and told me to cheat harder.

I tried, I really did, but the only thing that consistently worked against Revenant was constant, unpredictable motion. Despite his greater speed, Revenant didn't want to plow right into me, forcing him to stop short and attempt to tag me in close quarters. To encourage me to fight back, he would pause for just an instant if I hit him, but only if I hit him 'properly.'

Eventually, despite a brief instruction on how to throw a decent punch without hurting myself too badly, Revenant seemed to give up on me being able to deliver a hit with any useful force behind it, so he'd only pause if I hit him with an improvised weapon. I'd taken to using a length of rebar as a baton, which helped only just enough to be worth carrying it around as I attempted to scramble away from him.

I now leaned on that piece of rebar like a cane as I took deep, even breaths, trying to recover my stamina. All the morning runs in the world didn't prepare me for this kind of stressful exertion.

Revenant watched me dispassionately, not breathing hard and somehow not even the slightest bit dirty. There was no evidence of any of the countless stings on him, either. He was as utterly pristine as he'd been going into this training, and I kind of hated him for it. I had a stitch in my side, I was sweaty, my hair was all matted, and my costume was covered in the gross, crushed remains of various insects.

"What?" I said shortly, not caring anymore if I came off as rude.

"Just thinking you could use a different kind of weapon. The costume is spider silk, right?" Revenant asked.

I straightened up a little bit with pride. "Yeah. I did a few tests, it should be knife-proof and it might be able to stop a bullet. I'm pretty sure the armor panels could, at least."

Revenant cocked his head. "Hm. That's pretty decent. Those beetle shell armor pieces aren't supposed to be plate armor, right? Chitin layers alone would be too fragile to block a bullet. Those look more like _kozane_."

I cocked my head. "Uh, yeah, they're not meant to be completely solid, I based them off of lamellar armor. Basically, the shells give structure to the extra layers of silk. What's a kozane?"

Alex shook his head. "Just something I picked up somewhere. Never mind. Anyway, that armor of yours may be better than normal fabric, but it won't stop a Bakuda bomb, and Oni Lee could break you in many different ways. There's still a lot of room for improvement, but you're getting pretty good at slipping away. The real problem is you lack firepower."

"I haven't been using my venom against you," I said peevishly. "I'm not going to, either. Even if your regeneration means it's only a hundredth as effective, biting you hundreds of times still might cause problems."

Revenant waved a hand dismissively. "Not what I'm talking about. Even venom is relatively slow. I'm talking about _stopping power_. Catastrophic damage, or at least some kind of competent defense."

"I could have spiders spin nets," I suggested after some thought.

"Sounds like it would take too long. Maybe if you pre-made some strong rope that could be carried by your swarm, it could work," Revenant said, idly cracking his knuckles. "What you really need is some kind of powerful ranged weapon. A gun, or maybe grenades if you could coordinate your bugs to aim and arm them."

"That sounds, uh, kind of lethal," I said skeptically.

Revenant visibly rolled his eyes behind his mask. "Fine, _non-lethal_ guns and grenades, then. I know the PRT has several kinds—tranquilizer guns, tasers, foam grenades, flashbangs and the like."

"I wonder if they have a program to give that to independent heroes," I mused.

Revenant grunted noncommittally. "Well, the first thing you should do in any encounter is beef up your swarm. There doesn't seem to be any penalty for you making bigger swarms, and the size multiplies your effectiveness by a lot. It's surprisingly easy to lose track of you in all those bugs."

I nodded, committing that to memory. I'd be writing a _lot_ in my notebooks later.

After a pause, Revenant fished around in his jacket. "I'm going to show you how to use this."

My eyes widened and my heart started to pound hard again when I saw Revenant reach into his jacket and pull out a dark, new-looking gun. It was illogical, I knew all too well that Alex was just as able to kill me without a gun, but the very sight of the thing had my nerves on high alert. I had to keep my power from encroaching on Revenant.

"Where did you get that?!" I said, my voice hitching an octave higher than normal.

Revenant barked out a laugh. "Picked it up off the muggers I met the other day. I'm not going to waste money and time on background checks and licensing. Besides, little superhero, wouldn't you prefer this gun to be in _my_ hands, rather than some criminal's?"

I wanted to say that in fact I _didn't_ prefer it in his hands, but since he was the one currently holding a gun—though thankfully not pointed at me—I thought it would be prudent not to say anything. Revenant apparently took this as permission to launch into his explanation. Despite my apprehension, I quickly found myself fascinated by the lesson. Alex's deadly seriousness about gun safety was almost scarily intense but oddly reassuring. It reminded me that he was a responsible adult even though he didn't have his memories.

Revenant first removed the gun's magazine, then showed me how to clear the chamber and make sure it was empty. He explained in exhaustive detail how to operate the safety and clear any jams. Then he spent some time on basic gun handling—the discipline required to hold it properly and not point it at things you didn't intend to shoot—as well as showing me the various parts of the gun and what they did, and how to hold it while firing.

I felt extremely jumpy when he handed me the empty gun and ran a few drills and sparring matches with it in play, forcing me to let him see what I was doing with the gun and making me lose whenever I made a mistake with it. Mostly, that consisted of resting my finger on the trigger when I didn't intend to fire. I could have sworn that evil little trigger was hypnotic or something, it always seemed to draw my index finger to curl around it subconsciously.

After a while, though, I grew more assured about handling the gun. The constant failures and relentless repetition were a remarkably efficient training tool, and I quickly found myself adapting to subconsciously holding the gun in a way Revenant deemed acceptable, even while dodging him like my life depended on it.

One thing that rapidly became apparent was that I was a lot more effective with a gun than without, unsurprisingly. Revenant told me that my ability to aim at him accurately without looking was uncanny and definitely an avenue worth exploring. He eventually let me use it and blind him at the same time, which turned some of the longer matches into a demented high-stakes game of hide-and-seek as I was able to make good on my escape a few times, at least temporarily.

I'd never have expected it, but sparring against a parahuman while holding a real gun and pretending to use it was growing to be _incredibly_ fun, despite how strenuous it was. The gun made things a lot less one-sided, but it also made me feel like an actual badass for perhaps the first time in my life. It was no wonder that Miss Militia was so popular with the cosplayers. Every time I went a match without needing to be corrected felt immensely satisfying, and the ability to go nearly all-out and try tactics I'd never have dreamed of attempting on someone who wasn't nigh-invulnerable was amazingly liberating.

"You're learning," Revenant said approvingly as we took another break.

"You're a surprisingly good teacher," I said honestly.

Despite his mask hiding his expression, I caught the way his posture straightened slightly at the compliment. "I think we've established some good basics for training. It's progress."

I shrugged. "When will I be ready to take on Oni Lee, do you think? I mean, however well I did in any of our practice matches, I never actually _beat_ you, and I don't think I'd win if I went up against the real Oni Lee, either."

Revenant shook his head. "Facing him in a situation like this? Yeah, I doubt it. But with preparation and the element of surprise, holed up where he can't easily find you? That's a whole different story. I think we can start looking for them now. We could get a cab and have you search rapidly that way."

"That's way too quick. I'm not a radar, and my range is only two or three blocks, normally," I objected. "I can multitask with my power and search all the places in my range at once, but it still takes time, especially if I'm trying to be subtle about it. Just because _you_ stick out like a sore thumb to my bug-senses doesn't mean I can distinguish other people as clearly. Bug senses are not like a human's, it's really hard to interpret them. I was actually hiding behind a pillar to hear what you were saying the first time I was talking to you with my bugs."

Revenant grunted in annoyance. "Well, then you should practice with your senses and get _better_. Are there bugs you can bring along that see or hear better than others? Closer to the human norm?"

I paused, thinking. I hadn't really considered it, my bugs' senses were such a disorienting pain to disentangle that I hadn't thought to go species-by-species to figure out which could see and hear the best. Almost all of them were muddied and wildly out of proportion with human reaction times anyway, so it would be more like trying to pick out the least bad options of the bunch. "I try to ignore most of my bugs' senses, so it'll probably give me a killer headache, but I can try that out," I conceded.

Revenant waved a hand dismissively. "Save yourself the effort of going through every single one and just look up what arthropods have the best hearing and vision."

I let out a sigh, a bit annoyed that I hadn't thought of that first. "I guess I can live with that. It'll give me more time to search."

Revenant nodded. "Great. Now, I'm going to go into the other room so you can change out of that disgusting costume and meet me back outside in your civvies."

I glared at Alex and wordlessly flipped him the bird. I was one hundred and ten percent _done_ with him at this point, and it wasn't like he had any teachers he could complain to.

To my surprise, Alex snorted in amusement and sauntered away, leaving me to go change in peace.

I was struck with the strange thought that maybe Alex considered insults and bluntness to be a form of honest camaraderie. It was like that old TV show about the family of Halloween monsters that considered everything pleasant to be awful or scandalous, and everything morbid to be good and proper.

I shuddered. That comparison fit almost _too_ well.

After letting my swarm chew off all the crunchy and congealing bits of bugs that were stuck to my costume, I carefully folded and stowed away my costume in my bag, pending a good scrubbing later. I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed outside, where Alex was waiting for me in a new disguise that looked a lot closer to his normal self than the plain-looking man he'd had on earlier, but still a bit different.

"Let's go," Alex said impatiently, his voice having apparently not changed along with the rest of him, unlike before, which helped a lot with seeing him as 'Alex.' He started off at another brisk walk that I almost had to jog to keep up with.

While we were still in the range I'd been working in, I tried my best to put the bugs back where they belonged, but the bugs on the trailing edge weren't able to get much more specific instructions than to simply disperse back to their homes.

By unspoken agreement, we set off northwest into the Docks. The library was near the southern border of Azn Bad Boys territory and the northern border of the Empire Eighty-Eight, but the eastern coastline that made up most of the Boardwalk was also a bit too heavily patrolled by cops, private security, and superheroes to really be called gang territory. ABB territory was primarily inland this far south, then sort of curved around to encompass the remnants of the industrial parts of the coastline as well.

It wasn't just the gang tags, poverty, or lack of tourists that let me know what parts of town were gang territory. It was also the atmosphere of the place, almost like a sixth sense of danger I'd picked up by osmosis from living in the city, especially due to Winslow High being so heavily populated by budding gang-bangers. There was a kind of harshness, suspicion, and even hostility in people's eyes that only grew worse the deeper into gang territory we went.

Even in broad daylight, I didn't like going through these parts of town. At least Alex was here to put a stop to any kidnapping attempts or muggings while I was in my civilian identity.

Alex wasn't satisfied with just playing bodyguard as I methodically searched the buildings with my bugs, however. He grew more impatient as time went on, routinely walking ahead of me as though we weren't even doing this together, and his pace was starting to become punishing for me to keep up with, especially while carrying my backpack. He felt shackled by me, I knew, even though he claimed he was helping by using his nose like a bloodhound.

Alex and I didn't talk much as we searched, both of us being rather distracted. Hours went by, interspersed by short, stilted conversations. I was surprised when he ended up coming to a sudden halt and being the one to call for a break in the long, grueling search.

"Let's break for lunch. I'm starving." Alex said, pointing at a rather dingy-looking all-you-can-eat Americana buffet.

I looked at Alex incredulously. "Isn't that a bit, uh, heavy for lunch? Can't you just buy a quick sandwich at a gas station or something?"

"Hell no. A buffet also has no wait time, and you get more bang for your buck. It's efficient. I already spend a shitload of money on food, so this is better. I'll even treat you just this once if you don't complain. I'm going either way." Alex said, already walking towards the green-and-brown building.

I sighed and followed after him. I didn't object to the chance to take a breather and rest my aching feet, and I was getting kind of peckish anyway, but I'd never liked all-you-can-eat buffets. They always seemed a bit gross, and they vaguely reminded me of feeding troughs for livestock. Their generally cafeteria-level food wasn't something I needed more of in my life, either. I was pretty sure Winslow High's cafeteria violated the Geneva Conventions on a regular basis.

Alex barged into the restaurant and didn't bother holding the door open for me, but I slipped in after him as it was closing. It said something about this part of town that this buffet was the kind of place where you paid up front and everything was self-service. Alex quickly paid the petite waitress for the both of us, and immediately made a beeline for the meat section.

I decided to make a salad loaded with a wider variety of toppings and vegetables than I normally got to enjoy. I was finished making it before Alex was done stacking things onto his plate off in the distance like a barbarian, so I decided to grab an out-of-the-way booth to sit at.

A few moments after I sat down, Alex returned with a plate piled perilously high with roast beef, fried chicken, pasta, and brownies. He sat down in the booth across from me with an unsettlingly loud creak of wood, and looking at his plate, at first I thought he was just in the mood for some rich comfort foods, a stereotypical kind of 'guy' thing to like.

However, when Alex actually started eating, he rapidly escalated from eating with relatively civilized table manners, to spearing whole cuts of roast beef with his fork and taking _massive_ bites in rapid succession. It was so fast, I was completely baffled that he wasn't choking. The food just seemed to silently vanish the moment he closed his mouth. It was like watching one of those nature documentaries about komodo dragons devouring a buffalo, only worse. It was so spectacularly over-the-top, and jarred so completely with the refined arrogance I'd come to expect from Alex, I felt hopelessly confused.

As Alex went to load up another plate, I dismissed it as a particular quirk, or maybe just him wanting to eat quickly so we could leave faster. I returned to picking at my salad, but it was hard to eat like this. I'd never been put off by other people eating before, but for some reason, Alex's speed-eating seemed disgusting, and it was putting me off my own appetite.

After Alex returned again and bolted down his third mountainous plate of meat, pasta, and mashed potatoes in a matter of seconds, though, I started to wonder if he was hypoglycemic, like that one kid from summer camp who always needed to snack on things. By the fifth plate, I was starting to worry that he was going to get us thrown out of the restaurant. By the _eighth_ iteration in a distressingly small amount of time, during which he showed no signs of slowing whatsoever, I'd concluded that either Alex was trying to commit suicide, or this was some kind of powers-related thing. It _had_ to be.

Finally, I put down my fork. "Um, Alex?"

Alex's eyes flicked up to me for a mere moment before he looked down at his food again. _"_ _What?"_ he said in the fraction of a second between bites, seemingly loath to take away time he could have been eating in order to speak.

"Are you... feeling okay? You're eating faster than anyone I've ever seen in my life. Are you just really hungry, or...?" I trailed off.

Alex stopped eating, and for just a moment, he grimaced. I could hardly believe he didn't notice before, but I couldn't think of any other explanation for his reaction other than that he had somehow tuned me out completely and lacked self-awareness about how his behavior looked to other people. I felt a pang of secondhand embarrassment on his behalf, but he quickly covered up the reaction by scowling down at his mostly empty plate.

"There's something different about some of this food," Alex growled in frustration. "I can't put my finger on what it is. It's an aftertaste. _Something_. I'm really craving it, and I don't know why."

Alex punctuated his statement by shoveling a dripping forkful of mashed potatoes and gravy into his mouth. He sucked on his fork with a thoughtful frown. There was a faint metallic noise, and Alex's hand holding his fork suddenly jerked. I startled when I saw that his fork was suddenly missing its tines.

 _"_ _Alex!"_ I said in alarm, just barely catching myself in time to prevent it from being a shout.

Alex blinked in surprise, apparently just as shocked as I was at what he'd just done. Then, to my mortification, a pleasantly surprised expression dawned on his face and he actually began _chewing,_ making sharp little metallic crunching noises. Then, once again without visibly swallowing, he opened his now-empty mouth and said in an oddly calm voice, "Huh. Guess I was missing out on metal all this time. Mystery solved."

I stared at him, utterly flabbergasted and more than a little bit nauseated. "Wait, you can't seriously—how are you _okay_ with this?!"

Alex shrugged carelessly. "I'm used to it by now. Case 53, remember? My body pulls new weird shit on me _all the time_. It randomly made plain water taste like acid, for example, and trust me, you don't want to know the rest. I'm just glad this place has cups full of silverware everywhere, it'll let me practice my sleight of hand."

He took another bite out of his fork, and the tinny, brittle _crunch_ it made gave me a full-body shiver of revulsion, almost like listening to nails on a chalkboard.

"Stop," I said, trying to forcibly edit the sounds out of my mind.

"This is incriminating evidence. One of the best methods of dealing with incriminating evidence is to eat it," Alex said in a lecturing tone that was belied by the mischievous gleam in his eyes, before he took another bite.

"Please stop," I said, wincing. "That noise is _intolerable."_

In response, Alex popped the long handle of the fork into his mouth all at once and tilted his head back to silently gulp it down like a sword-swallower. Somehow, watching him do that was even worse than the chewing noises. When he was done, he looked back down at me with a smug smirk.

I dropped my own fork onto my half-finished plate and pushed it away. "Okay, _no_. I'm done. I know you think it's funny, Alex, but I just can't watch this, especially not while I'm trying to eat."

Alex snorted, holding up his hands. "All right, all right, I won't eat metal while you're around. You shouldn't waste food, though, so I'll just go sit at another table. I'm still hungry for more."

I put my elbows on the table and dropped my face into my hands. "Fine. Whatever. You do that, Alex. I'll just be here, wondering where exactly my life went so wrong."

He gave a small chuckle before getting up and leaving the booth. The chuckle seemed strange to me, even though it sounded completely normal, but then I realized it was maybe the first time I'd heard a genuine laugh come out of Alex, one that wasn't mocking or completely humorless.

When I was sure he wasn't looking, I smiled in spite of myself. It was progress, of a sort. Even if it came at the expense of annoying me, it still felt nice to be able to actually kid around with someone, even someone as deliberately unpleasant as Alex. The harsh edge to his behavior seemed to have smoothed out a bit, compared to earlier. Maybe he was starting to get less suspicious, or even starting to warm up to me.

I finished my salad in peace and solitude, and without Alex there to bother me, I realized I'd worked up a bit more of an appetite than I thought, so I went back to the buffet for some baked fish and roasted potatoes. Alex was still on his one-man crusade to put the buffet out of business, so by the time I finished with my second plate I went over to his table and told him point-blank we should leave before he was kicked out. He agreed readily enough, and we resumed our search.

All in all, despite our less-than-stellar surroundings, the mortifying incident earlier, and the sheer physical exhaustion of training followed by walking all over Brockton Bay, it was a surprisingly nice way to spend the day. In the back of my mind, I wished that Alex would team up with me on a more permanent basis than just a week, or at most two if we staggered out our deal. I could already tell Alex's practical combat training would be absolutely invaluable, and for all his many _glaring_ flaws, at least he was competent.

The search process became almost automatic for me by now, so I used the opportunity to think about what I might do to keep training with Alex after the terms of our deal expired. The problem was, I had no more money to make another deal. It wasn't enough to simply prove myself useful, either, because without any other leverage on my end, that would mean voluntarily submitting myself to more days of his service, which was obviously a nonstarter. Dad would disown me if he ever found out, for one, especially after that lesson on deal-making. Alex and I would have to be on more-or-less equal footing, like we were now, or else Alex would never respect me as a capable hero in my own right.

God help me, but I couldn't think of any better method than to simply get Alex to like having me around. How on earth was I supposed to do that? I hadn't had a single friend in two years. If making friends was a skill, then my own ability was horribly atrophied. Even before that, Emma had been by far the closest friend I had, and that had turned out about as badly as possible. Still, I had to at least _try_.

I picked up the pace to a half-jog to catch up with Alex, who was busy prowling ahead. He noticed me, of course, and turned around to look at me quizzically.

"I just wanted to talk for a bit before I had to think about going home," I said.

Alex furrowed his brow. "What do you mean, go home? It's barely after noon."

I blinked in surprise, thrown off my rhythm by Alex's sudden hostility, and I hurried to explain. "I'm worried about my dad. He works here in the Docks, and he doesn't know about me. He has an inconsistent schedule, and he expects me to be home by a certain time, so it'll be tricky trying to manage him."

Alex crossed his arms. "When we made our deal, I expected to get full days of your service, not whatever times happen to be most convenient for Your Ladyship."

I took a deep breath, struggling to keep my irritation at his sarcastic tone out of my voice. "I get that, but I already missed my classes for you today, and I have a secret identity to keep. I can't help you if my dad grounds me for disappearing all day, or worse, goes through my stuff to try to figure out why I went missing and finds out I'm a cape."

Alex gave a grunt. "I wasn't anticipating this being an issue. The Bakuda situation sure as shit won't be getting any better if we hold up our search until the weekends when you're free."

I held up my hands. "I'm not saying we should do that! I'd be willing to skip school to help out during the day. More than happy, even. I'm... um, the important thing to know about that, and the thing that everyone else already knows about me, is that... uh, I'm being bullied at school. Every day. For nearly two years, now."

I stared at the ground. Getting those words to stumble out of my mouth had been excruciating, but I had to share something about my civilian life if I wanted to get closer to Alex, and nothing dominated my life like school and the bullies. I could barely bring myself to raise my eyes to see Alex's reaction.

He only raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? People have been giving you shit for that long? Why the hell haven't you done anything about it?"

"The bullies are popular, and the administration always looks the other way for them! So what do you expect me to _do,_ exactly? Go Carrie on the school? Unleash a biblical plague?" I said, gesturing in exasperation.

Alex frowned in confusion. "Why are you even telling me this? Do you want to spend a favor? What, do you want me to go to your school in disguise and beat up your bullies or something?"

For a second, I couldn't do more than gape at Alex in horrified disbelief. Trying to get closer to Alex had been a _terrible_ idea, and it was all going wrong right before my eyes. "What? _No!_ Don't you get that I'd be the one to face the consequences? They'll just take it out on me!"

Alex shook his head. "If you don't want me to intervene, then what exactly do you want from me?"

I looked away from Alex and ran my hands through my hair in frustration. "I don't know, maybe just a little _sympathy?_ Is that too much to ask?"

There was a long, awkward silence. When I looked back at Alex, he had his mouth pressed into a thin line. He didn't look angry, it was more like he was hesitant.

In a moment of empathy, I realized I was wrong about Alex's intent, and my anger loosened a little. He wasn't being dismissive of my problems, he'd been genuinely trying to propose solutions. That had only made me upset, though, so he clammed up. He didn't want to say the wrong thing and risk alienating me further. In that moment, I felt I understood Alex a little bit more. Underneath his confident, condescending exterior, he wasn't actually all that good at people stuff. Neither of us were.

I huffed out a breath. "I shouldn't have brought it up. It's not a problem you or I can solve. I just do my best to ignore them."

Alex shook his head in disbelief. "Don't be so defeatist. That just plays into your enemies' hands. They probably _want_ you to think that. As a general rule, you shouldn't do what your enemies want you to do."

I averted my eyes. "I know that, but one of their dads is a lawyer, so anything else I try might just make things even _worse_. I don't know how to even _begin_ with getting transferred to another school or all that legal stuff, and I couldn't keep that from my dad either. He'd know the bullying is still going on."

Alex shrugged. "Then don't keep it from him. Something will happen and your father's going to find out eventually. It's going to be a lot worse if he finds out the wrong way. You know that, right?"

I sighed. "I guess."

Alex rolled his eyes at me. "Don't give me that sullen teenager schtick. For fuck's sake, you put on a handmade spider-silk costume and go out to get shot at by gangsters and fight supervillains in your free time. You could crush these bullies like one of your bugs, and you need to start acting like it."

I considered Alex's statement. It made me feel a little better, even if it was a bit of a backhanded compliment.

"Okay," I said, nodding. "I'll think about it. Still, though, I need to start heading home. We already searched a lot today, anyway."

Alex considered this silently for a moment. "Fine. I'll escort you to a bus stop, then I'll keep searching on my own after you leave."

I nodded, and we made our way to the closest bus stop, near an abandoned baseball field. As we stood there by ourselves, waiting for the bus, I could feel Alex's eyes boring into me.

"What?" I asked, feeling self-conscious under his stare.

"I think you should take this with you, just in case," Alex said, holding out his hand as if to pass me something while hiding it from view with his body. I looked down to see what he had, and nearly jumped out of my own skin.

His hand was holding nothing. Rather, his plaid sleeve and the _entire forearm underneath it_ had split apart, revealing a nest of black and red tendrils that were acting as an impromptu holster for his gun. I was the only one who could see the handle sticking out at this angle, but it still made me jump a little in shock and look around guiltily, even though that would probably only call attention to anyone that was watching this exchange.

"That's... nice of you to offer, Alex, but no thanks," I said, trying to get my heart rate back down. God, he was such a deeply weird person. I couldn't think of any other words for it. The concern motivating the gesture was almost endearing, and I wanted to encourage it, but how could I do that while also explaining to him that offering stolen guns to teenagers just wasn't seemly behavior? Wasn't he supposed to be the adult here? Like many things, I suspected that my objections just wouldn't compute with him, so I left it at that.

The gap in Alex's arm closed, and he shrugged like everything was normal. "Suit yourself."

Before I could contain it, a laugh escaped from me. Alex raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

"It's just—I think I just figured out what you mean when you say you're good at sleight of hand," I said.

Alex looked away, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly. "I'm leaving. Call me if anything comes up."

"Okay. Stay safe," I said, feeling kind of lame as I said it.

"Same goes for you." Alex said, and left me alone to wait for the bus.

I sat down on the bench, and waited for the bus to arrive. It already felt lonely without Alex around.

Had I really gotten used to him so quickly? Or was I just that starved for any human contact? Either way, I knew I had a new goal for the future—to form a real hero team between myself and Revenant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to the commenter Killjoy for inspiring that comedic scene at the buffet! Consider it an homage, or an instance of an Ascended Omake. Originally, I'd planned on Alex discovering his heavy iron dependency alone, but it's undeniably funnier with Taylor as an audience. As always, thanks for reading!


	19. Inflammation 3.3

**Inflammation 3.3**

As soon as Alex's surprisingly plucky little sidekick had gone her separate way, he reflected on how his plans had changed.

Taylor had responded much better to Alex's tutelage than he'd expected. She didn't whine or ask him stupid questions like a bratty kid, and she wasn't afraid to go on the attack or get dirty like a spoiled girl.

The thing that surprised Alex the most, though, was Taylor's rate of improvement. Not just in the use of her power, but also in her combat tactics. Even as Alex further refined his hearing, olfaction, and electroreception to find her, Taylor kept getting better at escaping and coming up with new tricks to stymie him. Swarm camouflage, noise distractions, silk tripwires, even nose-blinding with stink bugs. Her advancement was drastic enough to make Alex think that he'd initially underestimated her power's untapped potential, or that he was simply a naturally talented instructor. Possibly both. Either way, he was more than satisfied with the progress they had made.

With sufficient preparation and advantageous conditions, together they were ready to engage Oni Lee and Bakuda. There was no one alive with more experience to judge that than Alex himself, given his exhaustive study of Lung's memories of Oni Lee and Bakuda, so he was highly confident. Now the problem was just _finding_ them.

Playing hide-and-seek alongside Taylor was all well and good, but the duration was limited by Taylor's schedule, and Alex didn't like being in her presence when he was hungry. Even putting aside that he needed to be on his best mental footing and not betray any tells in order to keep his secrets, it still felt wrong to have his appetite whetted by a kid. Sure, she _claimed_ to be seventeen, but Alex didn't believe that for a hot second, no matter how precocious she was. If Taylor was actually seventeen years old, then Alex was Mary, Queen of Scots.

It was one thing for Alex to feel insatiable hunger for human flesh. That was normal, at least for him, and he was more-or-less used to it by now. The fact that Taylor was a kid, though, just made it weird.

Of course, Alex's hunger wasn't even _remotely_ as intense or painful as it had been before, especially after eating all that metal had done wonders for his persistent aches, but it was still bothersome. He had managed to compensate decently enough by deliberately staying upwind of Taylor while they were out searching, but he couldn't avoid her like that _all_ the time. It just wasn't practical.

The obvious solution was to make sure he was always comfortably full while in his public-facing persona. He could hunt at night and gorge himself until he was fit to burst, then go on a long fast during the daytime and tool around town to lower any suspicions directed at him. If hundreds of millions of people could make daytime fasting work during Ramadan, it should be no problem for him.

Thus, Alex decided to kill two birds with one stone. He could scope out the city, getting a head start on tonight's hunt, while also looking for any evidence of Bakuda and Oni Lee.

The thing was, Alex was sick of simply wandering around, passively looking for opportunities. He was feeling too impatient for that.

Usually that feeling was the prelude to him making a catastrophic mistake, but the fact remained that unless he got extraordinarily lucky, he wouldn't be able to find Bakuda just by looking around at the street level. It wasn't like the mad Tinker would be advertising her activities outside.

Alex needed a way to draw out her goons from hiding, and he was tempted to go into costume as Revenant and charge around at high speed, using himself as bait, but there was no outrunning Oni Lee's teleportation, unless you were someone like Alexandria or Legend.

Without Taylor around to search the interiors of buildings, Alex really had no choice but to shake things up, and think outside the box.

Changing course to head due south, Alex went towards the ABB's border with the Empire's downtown holdings. In just a few blocks, the place grew more and more like an active war zone. It wasn't Stalingrad levels of bad, or even Fallujah levels of bad, but it was still pretty fucking bad for anything seen in the mainland United States.

The infrastructure wasn't all that different from the other poor areas of Brockton Bay—that is to say, it was appalling—but what truly made the difference were the people. Whereas in the poorest parts of the Bay you couldn't look anywhere without seeing people making some attempt at industry, even if it was just sifting through trash or selling various vices, here there was none of that. Wary eyes watched Alex from behind windows and dark corners. Few pedestrians were scurrying along, their backs hunched and looking down, giving a wide berth to everyone and everything. Others were standing in loose groups around entryways and stoops, their intention to guard unmistakable.

It was, in short, a powder keg waiting to go off.

There had to be some way to leverage this tension to bait out a useful target. Surely, if Alex wore a civilian disguise, he could escape in the general confusion without Oni Lee hunting him down if he showed up. Lee was a consummate assassin and sadistic torturer, he attacked specific targets, and didn't generally go for crowds or fleeing civilians. That kind of thing would have gotten a kill order rather than the automatic Birdcage sentence he already had, and though that might have seemed like a distinction without a difference to Alex, Lung's memories contextualized that the actual enforcement measures were of a completely different magnitude. Even so, Alex wasn't too confident he'd get away without a fight if Oni Lee actually showed up.

So, the question became, how to draw enough attention to lure out the ABB, without drawing too much attention and baiting out Oni Lee? After training with Taylor, there was one thing that came to mind.

Alex made his way up to an apartment building's roof under his bland civilian guise. He stood in the middle, took out Spencer's revolver, and fired the .357 magnum into the air.

Pain like a railroad spike shooting through one ear and out the other made Alex immediately double over, clutching his head. He swore sulfurously, unable to hear himself, but the damage was easy to fix. More importantly, how could he forget that he'd enhanced his hearing? _Fucking hell_. And this was _after_ he'd just spent the better part of a morning teaching Taylor the ins and outs of firearms handling.

This was definitely going into the ever-growing wastebin of anecdotes Alex would never, ever tell anyone else.

Alex returned his hearing to the human norm and fired five more times, emptying the gun. It was still horrendously loud, but no longer debilitating. For good measure, he pulled out one of the fragmentation grenades he stole from the Empire safehouse, pulled the pin, and tossed it to the corner of the roof, taking shelter behind an air conditioning unit and covering his ears.

When Alex turned his hearing back up to its enhanced levels, the shouts and chaos he could hear from down below were gratifying as hell, and he made a quick exit to the neighboring roof and used it to survey the street level unnoticed. From a crouched position, he was shielded from view by the brick fascia of the building. He peeked out over the edge.

The reaction below was everything he could have hoped for.

While most of the surrounding people took cover or fled the area, three Empire-looking thugs hanging out in a stoop further down the street took out pistols. It was only a matter of less than a minute before there was the sound of a roaring engine off in the distance that heralded the arrival of a gigantic, bright red 1980s Cadillac land-yacht that Alex instantly recognized as Über and Leet's tinkertech 'pimpmobile' that they'd used in their Grand Theft Auto-themed episode. Marcus had been an avid viewer of the video game-themed villainous vloggers, and a gamer himself, so Alex quickly reviewed his memories to get a good idea of what to expect.

Leet was a highly unusual Tinker. He had no set specialty, and could build almost anything, but only once. The closer something he created got to something he already built, the higher chance it would fail, often spectacularly. He'd started out strong, using biotinkering and robotics to create video game minions, but then things started going catastrophically wrong. By the time he and the rest of the Internet had figured out the pattern, he'd already burned out his ability to do anything really useful. Now he was little more than a joke, often overshadowed by his partner, Über, who only had a weak Thinker power that let him pick up on expert techniques if he concentrated on them.

The ostentatious car seemed to defy physics as it turned on a dime to avoid other cars and obstacles, before slamming to a stop about twenty yards away from the Empire goons.

Before the Caddy had even come to a complete stop, the front doors swung open, revealing a duo dressed in badly mismatched and patchwork costumes. They immediately took cover behind the doors as the Empire thugs opened fire, which didn't seem to be affecting the car whatsoever. Even if their car and their disparate relative sizes wasn't indication enough that this was Über and Leet, the pair were decked out in gear they had used in previous jobs. Alex was both behind and above them, so he had a great vantage point to observe the fight.

Über and Leet were both outfitted with a hodgepodge of Tinkertech, with no dominant theme aside from sheer utility. It was all the best, most potent Tinkertech Leet had cooked up for all their heists, which apparently they'd been hoarding just in case the shit hit the fan. Über was wearing black-and-red sci-fi armor from Mass Effect, and his visible weaponry consisted of a new assault rifle that was modified with hasty Tinkertech additions, plus a katana sheathed at his hip. Leet was wearing an electric blue Fallout vault suit with a bandolier covered in pouches, a black hard-light projector backpack that had proven versatile enough to be used in several previous jobs, and Captain Falcon's garish red helmet. He was also carrying some kind of short, boxy weapon that looked like someone took apart an old radio and grafted it to the insides of kitchen appliances. Despite its dubious construction, the way he held it and the improvised trigger left little doubt it was some sort of gun.

"Jackpot," Alex muttered to himself, grinning slightly. Judging by their lack of matching themed costumes, Alex bet dollars to donuts that these two chucklefucks weren't here fighting Nazis of their own free will. Leet was no Squealer or Trainwreck, a Tinker that could only kludge machines together that somehow worked despite all logic. Leet manufactured his own stuff from scratch, and at least made sure his creations fit an aesthetic, so if he was forced to dig up his stash of surviving gear and improvise these two new guns to go out and fight Nazis, that meant he was under a ton of pressure.

Alex suspected it was the kind of pressure that came from having a bomb surgically implanted in one's head.

Of course, that pressure also meant Leet's new weapons were probably made for lethality rather than showiness. The bombs that were probably in their heads couldn't be discounted as a threat, either.

Alex watched as Über rushed out of cover, apparently as a distraction. The Empire thugs opened fire, and where two of their shots should have hit Über, there was a weird optical distortion that appeared around him.

"Son of a bitch," Alex swore. He had forgotten that the black armor Über was wearing had a forcefield generator built into it. It could stop small, fast-moving objects like bullets, but not slow ones, allowing him to move around and fight with it active. So much for Alex's plan to scare them back to their hidey-hole with gunfire.

As Über soaked up bullets, Leet popped up from behind the car door and fired his boxy weapon at the thugs. It flung a weird distortion in the air, too fast to track, and when it hit the side of the stoop next to the thugs, a gray-green pulse splashed out and formed an irregular, faintly glowing bubble around the thugs, about twenty feet in diameter. At first it seemed like the field didn't affect the thugs whatsoever, but it quickly became clear that they weren't moving at all, and had been stuck in place somehow. Über took aim with his modified assault rifle and fired on them. There was no visible beam or projectile whatsoever, just a sizzling noise followed by the _crack_ of one of the thugs' guns shattering to pieces in his frozen hands, and the ripping sound of most of his shirt and jacket being shredded from his completely immobile body, blasted away as though by an enormously powerful wind.

Über repeated the trick on the other thugs, destroying their guns and taking large pits out of the brick behind them. That was a nasty weapon, and Alex highly doubted the thugs would be alive if they hadn't been frozen. It seemed like the temporal stasis field was only affecting living matter—and even the thugs' hair was evidently organic enough to qualify, though none of their clothing did.

Leet either deactivated the time-freeze gun or it ran out of juice, because in an instant the gray-green field disappeared and the thugs were suddenly moving again, considerably disoriented by their suddenly-destroyed weapons and clothes. As Über drew his katana and Leet started chucking pixelated hard-light fireball holograms to mop up the remainder of the thugs' resistance, Alex ducked back behind cover and pulled out his burner phone to give Taylor a call. She picked up in two rings.

"Hello?" she said, sounding worried. "Alex, are you—"

"No names," Alex hissed. "Change of plans. I'm on Lincoln and 6th. Found those two video game freaks. I think they're hostages too. I'll try to distract them, come quick and lie low when you get here. I want you to follow them back to their nest."

"I'm on the bus, we just passed Prescott Park. If I get off now, you're fifteen or twenty minutes away even if I run!" Taylor said urgently.

Alex swore under his breath. "Fuck it. Get here as fast as you can, but in the meantime I'll just beat the location out of them."

Before Taylor could respond, Alex hung up and looked out to see what was happening. The thugs had been defeated in record time, and were all expertly hog-tied. It was actually kind of hilarious watching them ineffectually wriggle around half-naked. He watched as Leet popped the trunk of the car and Über started dragging one of the thugs along, probably intending to kidnap them, if Lucky's description of Bakuda's methods was anything to go by.

Alex wondered if Bakuda was surveilling these two goons somehow. Sending out valuable, volatile parahumans would carry more risk, and joke or not, Über and Leet were the very definition of unpredictable hostages. Knowing the depths of Bakuda's paranoia, Leet was probably rigged to explode in at least six different ways if he so much as looked at her funny.

Ducking out of sight from the street, Alex assumed his Revenant disguise. As he fully stood from the roof, unfortunately his movement seemed to be caught by Über's peripheral vision, or perhaps something built into the tinkertech helmet visor.

Über immediately dropped the thug he was dragging, whipped around, and opened fire. Alex quickly ducked back onto the roof, putting his back to the low brick fascia.

A flash of pain across Alex's back interrupted his calculation of attack vectors. He stumbled forwards away from the low wall lining the roof, then turned to see that the brick he was taking cover behind was silently being pitted and blasted apart like it was mere styrofoam by the scattershot invisible force being thrown out by Über's gun.

Alex juked to the right and drew closer to the edge of the roof, picking up an irregular chunk of debris roughly the size of a bowling ball and digging his fingers into the brick and masonry to get a firm grip. He popped back up to lob the chunk at Über like a fastball, and was almost instantly rewarded with a searing pain along his ribs and sternum. Über's reaction time was _quick_.

Dropping back down the moment he hurled the piece of debris, Alex closed his wounds with a flurry of biomass, though at a noticeable loss. He shuffled further along the edge and risked peeking out from another spot on the roof, and saw that his aim had been true. Despite his force-shield, Über had been knocked clean off his feet. Red-and-gray dust from pulverized brick and mortar decorated his dented chestplate and upper arms in a starburst pattern, and the only evidence of the chunk were a few bricks strewn about like shrapnel. Alex felt a thrill of satisfaction that Über's gun was lying on the ground, the fragile added construction clearly busted by the impact. Even as Alex watched, though, Über was gingerly getting to his feet. Apparently, the armor wasn't just useless aesthetics for the forcefield generator.

Growling with frustration, Alex jumped off the roof, landing not ten feet from Über and cracking the pavement on impact.

"You're no match for us," Über proclaimed, drawing his katana with one smooth motion.

"Is that cliché supposed to be intimidating?" Alex said with a scornful laugh. "Run back to your—"

Cutting himself off when he noticed an object flying towards him from the corner of his eye, Alex instinctively jumped back, an inelegant movement that nonetheless easily covered thirty feet. The red-and-white object fell to the ground, but it was soon joined by several others, being thrown underhand by Leet from behind the car.

Glancing back to the first shape on the ground, Alex felt nonplussed when he saw that what he'd thought were grenades were actually _pokéballs_.

The scattered balls sequentially activated in the space of about a second, in a disorienting array of different effects. Some disgorged chimeric knockoff Pokémon with bright flashes of light, others vanished and were replaced by a monster with a loud bang of displaced air, and one seemed to dizzily unfold a monster from a shrunken-down state.

The first to emerge was a hulking bipedal alligator-man which looked like a Godzilla rip-off that had been spray-painted blue and red. The second was a child-sized goblin thing with long claws that looked like an anthropomorphic Siamese cat. The third was a three-foot-long dull yellow creature that looked like a cross between a squat, legless lizard and a wasp, with two proportionally small insect-like wings and a short, cone-shaped tail tipped with a stinger. Then, a three-headed wingless bird that looked like a cormorant crossed with an emu emerged at the same time as a bear-sized green toad with tentacles, fronds, and a massive, fleshy red flower sprouting from its back. Lastly, there came a two-foot-tall bipedal rodent that was obviously supposed to be a Pikachu, and was easily the most accurate of the bunch except for its clearly dyed hair and weirdly moist, lobed, naked tail.

Either Leet's various attempts at biotinkering hadn't taken well to however long they'd been confined, or his power's drawback had applied to the pokéballs, because the goblin-like cat-thing and the giant toad immediately keeled over, apparently dead, and the others were disoriented.

Alex recovered from his shock at the monsters' sudden appearance before any of them did, and charged forward to attack.

The musclebound blue freak met Alex's charge, swiping its claws at him with surprising speed. He took the blow and was nearly staggered off his feet, but he regained his footing and punched the thing in its mismatched jaws with a satisfying _crunch_. The thing's head rocked back and it gave a gurgling roar of pain, but it quickly recovered and surged forward, attempting to bear Alex to the ground. He managed to get his arms around its thick neck instead, and with a quick, violent jerk, the thing collapsed with a broken spine.

"Über, now!" Leet shouted, and before Alex could figure out what Über was supposed to be doing, Leet appeared over the long hood of the car, took aim, and fired his boxy device. Alex felt a sudden flash of disorientation as all the monsters around him suddenly shifted positions, swarming in close all around him, while Über and Leet had also shifted somewhat.

After a moment, Alex realized he'd been briefly stopped in time, but he had more immediate concerns. The three-headed bird was mostly blocking his field of view, and the fact that its long, incredibly sharp beaks were pecking at the eye-holes in his mask prevented him from noticing anything else.

Unfortunately for the monsters, Alex had just spent half the day practicing how to move and fight even while essentially blindfolded, and these monsters weren't nearly so coordinated as Taylor's bugs. Alex shielded his eyes with one arm and struck out blindly with the other, managing to catch the three-headed bird backhanded, batting it aside like a toy and sending it tumbling in a small explosion of downy brown feathers.

Alex's victory was short-lived, though, as the fake Pikachu slapped its wet, slimy tail against his leg and sent a jolt of electricity surging through his body. It burned like fire as it conducted through him, and he would have screamed, but he was rendered completely rigid by the current.

The attack lasted less than a second before the disgusting overgrown rat was spent, and finding he could move again, Alex uprooted his right foot and gave the mutant mascot a vicious kick that sent its broken body crashing into a boarded-up storefront window.

That same moment, there was a buzzing sound, and something bit down on Alex's shoulder, then repeatedly punched into his leather-clad torso with something sharp, as if it were trying to shank him in the kidneys. The sharp point didn't penetrate deep, but almost immediately, Alex started to feel the biomass making up his torso prickle and seize up where he'd been stabbed. He twisted and tried to rip the thing off of him, but it was unnaturally graceful and kept evading his hands, only to latch onto his back yet again and renew its attack. Finally, he twisted around violently enough to cause it to lose its grip, and he managed to smack it away just as it was coming back to bite again.

As his hit sent the thing tumbling away across the asphalt, Alex saw that his attacker had been the bug-snake thing. Disappointingly, the blow hadn't splattered the thing into paste—in fact, hitting it had felt like swatting aside a balloon. The creature was simply too lightweight and rubbery to get thrown with any damaging inertia. Just from the look of it, Alex surmised that his numbness was probably from some kind of venom. He stomped towards the bizarre creature, fighting through the paralysis and intensifying, prickling pain that was spreading through his biomass.

The creature was frightened by Alex's approach, its horizontally-slit pupils dilating in alarm. It scrunched up its body and leaped, its undersized wings beating frantically like a startled chicken. It quickly ran out of altitude and landed on a patch of weeds and dead hedges that used to be a small landscaped area in front of a store. Wriggling rapidly, it used its blunt snout to dig into the loose dirt and used its tail to fling the excess soil away. Within seconds, it had burrowed down out of sight.

Nonplussed, Alex looked over to the three-headed demon-emu, but it, too, had given up on fighting. It hopped to its feet like an acrobat and ran away, two of its three heads hanging limp and bleeding. Alex could barely move anymore at that point, though, so pursuit was out of the question. Thinking frantically, he recalled that swallowing snake venom wasn't dangerous, only blood contact, so he tried consuming and reforming the parts of his body that were going numb. The paralysis vanished almost instantly, and surprisingly Alex had gained a new template as well, which he filed away in his mind for later examination.

Turning his attention back to Über and Leet, who hadn't moved from before, Alex paused in confusion at what he saw.

Über and Leet had both removed their helmets, revealing their true faces to the world. Über had squarish features and short, straight brown hair, while Leet was rat-faced with a weak chin and curly black hair, and both of their expressions were twisted up in agony. Alex noticed something was odd about the way they were standing—they were holding their heads stock-still as if an invisible vice was clamped down on them. Über had taken his katana and was holding it by the blade behind his neck, the tip of the sword pointed towards him like he was about to plunge it into his own skull.

 _"_ _Hurry!"_ Leet said, the words escaping him like a last gasp.

With a muffled cry of pain, Über brought the blade down on his own neck and wrenched his head forward, leaving a bloody thing roughly the size and shape of a battery suspended in a tiny yellowish-gray time-stop bubble in the air behind him.

Alex was too surprised to take advantage of the opening. With a start, he realized what they were doing—Leet had somehow reversed the Manton Effect limitation on his pistol-thing and frozen the bombs in their heads just like Clockblocker could freeze objects with a touch, and he was having Über cut them free.

Knowing Leet's unreliable technology and Clockblocker's unpredictable freezing duration, though, Alex decided to back up while the two geeks extricated themselves.

Über ran behind Leet, who was still holding his weird gun, which was starting to emit white smoke. Without so much as wiping off the blood from the katana blade, Über used it to cut into Leet's neck like a scalpel.

Leet screamed, and fell free of the bomb a moment later. Über dropped the katana and grabbed his scrawny friend's arm in one hand and scooped his helmet off the ground with the other, then he practically hauled Leet away, both of them breaking into a sprint to escape the bombs.

"Stop right there," Alex spat, running to intercept them. He got ahead of them easily, and turned to face them as they stopped running from the bombs.

"You're done. Surrender before I start removing body parts," Alex said, readying himself to pounce on them if they made a move.

"Dude, what the _fuck!?_ We never _wanted_ to fight, we had _bombs_ stuck in our heads, do you not _see_ them!?" Leet shouted, gesturing back down the street before gingerly putting his red-and-gold helmet back on.

"I know what Bakuda did. As hilarious as it is that you actually managed to out-Tinker that arrogant cunt right under her nose, I'm not going to let you get away. Where is she?" Alex demanded.

"Wait, whose side are you on?" Über asked, stepping in front of Leet protectively, putting on his own helmet and re-sealing it with a click and a hiss of air.

"I'm Revenant, a rogue, and I won't hesitate to—" Alex began, but was cut off by a fizzling spark of the smoking gun in Leet's hand, followed by the disappearance of the yellowish bubble and immediate detonation of both bombs.

They were all standing well outside of the blast radius, but one of the bombs had sent out an icy chill that affected the width of the entire street. Near the epicenter, frozen water vapor in the air sparkled as it drifted down and melted into a haze of fog, the four corpses of Leet's biotinkered monsters were half-frozen, and the Cadillac was covered in frost. The Empire thug Über had been dragging towards the car had one side covered in delicate hoarfrost, and was making a pained, keening sound like a teakettle.

Whatever the other bomb had done, it was only marginally less spectacular than the ice bomb. A circle of asphalt where Über had been standing that had turned a sickly off-white color, seemingly unaffected by the ice, and where the circle intersected a light pole and the front third of their Cadillac, they had changed color to darker hues and slumped into a half-melted taffy-textured mass like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.

"Bakuda knows we slipped the leash," Über said quickly. "She'll have sent Oni Lee after us when the bombs went off."

"Shit. All right, truce for now, get moving!" Alex said, stepping aside.

Leet dropped the gun and they all started running again.

"We'll take a car!" Über said, diverting to the nearest car parked down the street, an old green Nissan sedan.

"I can—" Leet started, but Über interrupted him by raising his armored fist and punching out the driver's side window, then popping the door lock from inside. The alarm went off, but the door opened.

"That works too," Leet muttered.

Über leaned inside and wrenched out the wiring harness beneath the steering wheel. A few seconds of fiddling later, the alarm cut out, and few seconds after that, the engine started up.

As Über was starting the car, Leet ran around to take the passenger seat, while Alex got into the backseat. The car listed far to the side as he stepped in, its suspension squeaking in protest. He settled into the middle seat, trying to distribute the weight more evenly, inwardly cursing himself for forgetting to hide his unusual mass better. Too late now.

The front tires chirped as the car slowly lurched forwards. Über expertly rowed through the gears of the manual transmission to get them out of there as fast as possible, but the small engine was straining to compensate for the vehicle's load.

"What the hell? Can't you focus on driving this car any faster!?" Leet said to Über.

"I'm trying! There must be something heavy in the trunk. Any sign of Oni Lee?" Über asked, sounding uncharacteristically terrified even as he managed the car's wallowing understeer during a high-speed turn onto a side street.

Leet lowered his window and stuck his head out, turning it gingerly while his hand cupped his bleeding neck.

"No, I think we got away clean," Leet said, pulling his head back into the car. He looked back at Alex and added, _"_ _Mostly_ clean. What the hell is wrong with you, Revenant? Why did you attack us if you already knew we were fighting because Bakuda made us do it?"

"Nobody made you shoot me on sight," snarled Alex.

"Oh, well, _excuse_ me for thinking a guy dressed like _that,_ who was hanging around the armed Nazis, was an Empire Eighty-Eight cape!" Über said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "What do you want from us, anyway?"

"I was trying to get you two to run away so I could track you back to Bakuda," Alex said.

"Well, sucks to be you, because she didn't keep us at her hideout," Leet said sourly. "She got one of our henchmen to turn on us, attacked us at _our_ hideout, destroyed my last robots, stole the rest of my tools, and rigged us to blow right then and there! Then she parked us in front of a webcam and used the computer to give us our marching orders."

"So you don't even know where she is?" Alex said, feeling his anger spike. He'd been hoping parahumans warranted a closer eye than low-level goons like Lucky, but apparently Bakuda had a solution for that, too.

"Yeah, so your dumb plan wouldn't have worked," Leet sneered.

Alex ignored the insult and got out his cell phone, opening his text messages and sending a new one to Taylor.

I have them both in hand, we're in a green sedan. Where are you?

Not long after, she sent a reply.

Just past the north gate of Prescott Park

Alex typed out a quick response.

change of plans. Stay there. I'm coming to you. Dress appropriately and call it in.

"Über, drive us to the north gate of Prescott Park." Alex demanded.

"Okay, but before you do anything rash, I'd like to point out that we want Bakuda dead too," Über said, his voice growing calm and assured. "Leet and I are free now, so there's no reason we shouldn't help each other."

Alex looked up from his phone and frowned behind his mask. Über was driving a lot more conservatively now, which meant he was putting his power's focus elsewhere. "Using your power to try your hand at diplomacy, huh? Don't bother, I know you'll double-cross me at the first opportunity. You two aren't slaves anymore, you should just take that as a win. I really couldn't care less what happens to you, but maybe if you come with me and surrender willingly, they won't count it as strike three and put you in the Birdcage."

"We aren't on our third strike yet," Leet said snidely.

"What, does attempted murder, kidnapping, and grand theft auto not count? The felony, not the game," Alex shot back.

"You stood aside and let us steal this car! That's a crime too! Plus you killed my Pikachu and Über's Feraligatr, that's animal cruelty!" Leet argued.

"And you two get off on beating up prostitutes, so don't act all high and mighty." Alex said with a rude, dismissive wave.

"Just for the record, we were only robbing the ABB, including their hookers, and one of them fought back. We get no end of grief for _winning_ that fight, but losing it would have been even worse for our reputation," Über said resignedly.

"Yeah. No matter what else you do, if you fuck _one_ little goat, then you get labeled a goatfucker for life," grumbled Leet.

"Spare me your excuses. Besides, you were the ones who let those last two chimeras escape out into the wild. If they start breeding, the PRT Director will skin you alive." Alex scoffed.

"Look, asshole, you're not the only one that's watched Jurassic Park. I avoided even the _possibility_ of them changing sex and breeding because I only ever made one of each," Leet countered.

Alex could hardly believe his ears. His mind tried to process the sheer ignorance behind that statement and blew a gasket somewhere along the way. A bitter envy started seething inside of him at the sheer _injustice_ that manipulating genetics came so easily to this entitled, ignorant, pissant little Tinker, despite his mastery being entirely unearned.

Alex worked to unclench his jaw long enough to bite words out. "Did you even _realize_ that at least half of the monsters you made had parts of organisms that can possibly reproduce by themselves?"

"What are you talking about? I didn't use anything weird like that, just whatever samples of normal animals I could find," Leet said defensively.

"It's called _parthenogenesis,_ you fucking moron! There are common kinds of frogs, lizards, snakes, bugs, and even _birds_ that don't need a male in order to breed, to say nothing of that plant-thing self-pollinating and dropping seeds," Alex said, counting off his points on his fingers.

"I never noticed Venusaur dropping any seeds or anything like that," Über said reasonably.

Shaking his head, Alex hid his jealousy beneath a layer of hostile contempt. "Just because it hasn't happened _yet_ doesn't mean it won't. What about that snake-bug-thing that ran away? What the hell was that even made from?"

Leet shifted to the side to glare at Alex without straining his injured neck. "You mean Über's Dunsparce? I made it from a wasp and a garden snake I found in my backyard, plus some pigeon to fill in gaps in the internal anatomy. There were little bits of dog and human DNA in it too, same as all the rest, to make them smarter and want to follow orders. There was nothing that can make any seeds or spores or buds or whatever."

"What kind of garden snake? Do you mean a _garter_ snake?" Alex demanded.

"No, it was one of those tiny little black ones that looks kind of like a worm. What's the big deal?" Leet said, narrowing his eyes in irritation.

"The big deal is that you used a _threadsnake,_ you fucking idiot! They're invasive, they live underground practically _everywhere,_ and the females can reproduce asexually! And do you even know how wasps breed? They paralyze a host, drag it underground, lay eggs in it, and then their larvae eat it alive, saving the vital organs for last!" Alex said, smacking the back of Leet's headrest and making him jump in surprise, then wince in pain as his neck wound was jostled by the sudden movement.

"Hax never did that! He's my pet. He's such a sweet little dude—or she, whatever. Maybe Boss might've hurt someone, but you killed him..." Über trailed off, his voice cracking a little as a hint of his true shellshock and grief got past his power's shallow façade of diplomacy.

"I told you not to get too attached to them," Leet sighed. "Besides, this douchebag doesn't know what he's talking about. He can't know if Hax is male or female."

"It _stung_ me, and only female wasps have stingers," Alex said, clenching his fists to keep his hands from crushing the smug little twit's skull of their own accord. "Tell me, how many chromosomes does it have? Is it haploid, diploid—or, God forbid, _triploid?"_

Leet's frustration finally boiled over. _"_ _Enough!_ Holy fuck, man, _who the hell cares?_ How do you even know all this shit off the top of your head? Are you a veterinarian or something? Does your TV only get the Animal Planet channel? Why won't you just _shut up_ about the fucking chromosomes!?" he ranted.

"This is the most _basic_ genetics! If you don't even know why that matters, then how the fuck did you think you were qualified to engineer these things in the first place!?" Alex said furiously. Leet had blown a priceless opportunity to create new forms of life on fucking _video game monsters_. The sheer _waste_ of it all made Alex feel physically ill. Clenching his fists wasn't working anymore, his hands were shaking from sheer outrage.

Leet opened his mouth to argue back, but Über, perhaps sensing Alex's increasingly murderous mood, interrupted him. "Come on, Leet, don't let him get to you. Revenant, this argument is pointless, it's really hit or miss if a Tinker fully understands what it is they're building."

Alex slumped back in his seat. "You know what? Fuck it. Dealing with whatever _horrors_ you two idiots unleash on the world isn't my goddamn problem. I hope you two enjoy being a villain's target practice or prison bitch, because there sure as fuck aren't any video games in the Birdcage."

 _"_ _Please,"_ Über said, the single word filled with a freight of emotion—it was as if he was badly overacting sadness, honesty, and humility. "If we got sent to the Birdcage, it would be a death sentence. You _know_ that. Sure we fought you by mistake, but we were under duress! Do you honestly believe we deserve to _die_ for that? After everything we've already been through?"

"I told you to knock it off with the sappy bullshit," Alex said. He paused, then leaned closer, smiling with malicious glee behind his mask as he taunted them. "Maybe the whole 'inescapable prison' thing is a _lie,_ you ever think about that? Maybe it's just a fancy Tinkertech execution chamber—it's not like anyone would be able to tell the difference, since there's no communication or parole. The government's done far worse without a second thought. Hell, it's what I would do."

"You're a sadist," Leet said disgustedly. Über made an unsubtle quelling gesture at him.

"Maybe we can work something else out? You're a merc, so you wouldn't mind taking payment in exchange for letting us go, right?" Über said with affected casualness.

"Now _that's_ more like it," Alex said with a humorless laugh. "Christ, took you long enough to figure it out, even after I _told_ you I'm a rogue. If you want to make a deal in exchange for your freedom, then give me your best offer."

"Bakuda stole most of our cash and stuff, but we can still scrape up a few hundred dollars at least," Leet said grudgingly. "Give us a few days and we can get much more. Plus we can offer tech and services."

Alex's interest piqued at that, but he didn't take the bait. "Not good enough. I'm already on the clock working with the heroes anyway. You can't beat their offer, not after counting the intangible benefits bringing you in will provide, such as the cred it will buy me with the heroes, and the sheer _joy_ of watching you two getting hauled off to die in the Birdcage."

"No one in their right mind would actually believe you're one of the good guys just because you turned us in," Über said vehemently, dropping his diplomatic techniques.

Alex laughed mockingly. "Are you _joking?_ Of course they'll think I'm one of the good guys. Nobody thinks it's weird that the _'_ _great hero'_ Dragon runs that fucking charnel house they call a prison, because it's only the bad guys getting their comeuppance, and the alternative is more villains and monsters running around. I don't have to convince anyone I'm nice and friendly, I just have to convince them I'm _on their side."_

Leet's lip curled in disdain. "Jesus. If anyone here belongs in the Birdcage, it's _you."_

Alex rolled his eyes, and in the process caught sight of their destination just down the road. He could even see Bug in costume, waiting by the gate. "Whatever. We're at the park. Pull over right there, Über, and if you try anything with the car I'll snap your collarbones like twigs."

Über didn't reply, but did as he was told, parking across the street from where Bug was standing.

"Get out of the car and we'll go meet my apprentice. Nice and slow." Alex ordered, opening the door on the driver's side and getting out as they did the same.

Leet and Über exchanged a nod across the roof of the car, and then Leet tossed Über a silver cylinder.

 _"_ _Run!"_ Über shouted, and with a tinny pre-recorded sound effect, he activated the red lightsaber and slashed out at Alex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a fun chapter to write. I think I might have gone a bit overboard with the video game-themed Easter eggs, though, and coming from me that's really saying something. Suffice it to say, Leet's biotinkered creations are all made from organisms you can find in a typical New Hampshire city, and although their aesthetics are a bit wonky, their actual abilities are quite apropos to their source material.
> 
> In this chapter, we also learn that Alex really hates it when people do genetic engineering better than him without even really trying. Also, he's not entirely accurate with some of the offhand comments about certain animals' biology, but his points remain essentially correct. Give him a break, he's a virologist, not an entomologist or herpetologist.


	20. Inflammation 3.4

**Inflammation 3.4**

_Being avoided like a leper doesn't exactly make me feel like a superhero adored by the public,_ I thought as I leaned against the graffiti-covered brick wall surrounding the park entrance, anxiously waiting for Revenant to arrive.

My costume and my gathering swarm scared away the group of loiterers that had been hanging out near me, and a few dog-walkers and joggers steered clear as well once they caught sight of me and my swarm. That was probably for the best with the influx of powers that was about to meet here. At least two people got their phones out and took pictures, that I noticed, but they kept their distance.

I was really starting to appreciate the old soldier's saying of 'hurry up and wait.' As soon as I'd made a scene to the bus driver about needing to get off immediately, I'd started running into Prescott Park looking for a place to change into my costume, as well as searching for bugs to gather. I'd only slowed down when I was out of earshot of anyone else so that I could call the PRT directly instead of Armsmaster's number. The operator was surprisingly impassive about the whole thing, but helpfully told me that they'd be diverting a van with Triumph riding along just to make sure that Über and Leet made it into custody. It had already been en route to the scene of the shootout, so it would be here in only a few minutes.

Once I found a particularly private thicket of bushes, I changed into my costume and gathered a decent swarm. The park was full of insects, most hidden away from the chilly weather, but accessible nonetheless. I'd only just left my backpack behind when Revenant's texts came in, telling me to meet him at the north gate, which fortunately had been only twenty yards away when I got the message. I set the various spiders and caterpillars to spinning lines of silk in preparation.

For lack of anything else to do while my bugs worked and I waited at the gate, I called home, leaving a message on the answering machine for my dad, explaining I was staying after school to talk something over with 'Lisa.' It was somehow just as guilt-inducing as lying to his face, but there was no way I'd make it back in time before he got back from work unless he stayed late today, which I couldn't count on.

I didn't have long to dwell on that thought before I spotted the green sedan Revenant had described approaching the park's entrance, with the costumed villains in the front seat and Revenant looming behind them.

The car parked across the street from me, and the doors opened up a moment later. Über, Leet, and Revenant got out at the same time. Leet turned to Über, and reached into his belt pouch.

Before I could shout a warning, Leet had already tossed a silver cylinder to Über.

 _"_ _Run!"_ Über yelled, activating the instantly-recognizable lightsaber.

Revenant backpedaled as the red lightsaber sheared straight through the car's rear door window frame with a terrible shrieking noise of tortured glass and metal, missing him by bare inches.

"Bug! Don't let Leet get away, I'll handle Über!" Revenant bellowed, not even turning to look at me. I obeyed, splitting my swarm and sending one after the fleeing Leet and another after Über.

Luckily, Leet's helmet and visor didn't cut off my access to his face, so I was able to send my bugs swarming into his eyes, mouth, nose, and ears almost instantly. Über, by contrast, was wearing armor that covered almost everything, his face included, so I used my bugs to search for any chinks or cracks in the armor they could fit through.

Über rushed forward to press the attack on Alex, largely unimpeded by my bugs. The red lightsaber flicked out noiselessly, so quick I could only see it as a blur. The lightsaber beam was weightless, and seemed as insubstantial as a flashlight beam. It crossed Revenant's right forearm with a hiss, and his arm immediately fell to the sidewalk, both cut ends blackened and steaming. Über dodged Revenant's retaliatory left hook and made a third, fourth, and fifth strike with spectacular skill and speed that made the choreography of the actual _Star Wars_ movies look like children playing with sticks in comparison.

Almost too quick to see, Revenant's left hand joined his right arm in hitting the pavement, and then he was suddenly missing his right leg below the knee, nearly causing him to trip before tendrils sprouted out of the stump to form a hasty, incomplete facsimile of the missing limb. Über took advantage of Revenant momentarily staggering off-balance to make a deep horizontal slash across Revenant's chest. The black-and-red wound yawned open, showing Revenant had been nearly bisected, the cut reaching nearly to his spine.

Total shock and horror rooted me to the spot, and for a heart-stopping moment, I thought I'd just witnessed Alex die. Über was really trying to _kill_ him, I belatedly realized, and the dangerous reality of the bizarre situation crashed down on me.

In the blink of an eye, Revenant had pulled the two halves of himself together with black tendrils and closed the wound seamlessly, but in the tiny fraction of a second it took to heal himself, he was debilitated for long enough that Über made a follow-up strike that lopped off Revenant's good leg, sending him crashing to the pavement.

My horror ebbed away, replaced by a cold fury and the buzzing of my power encroaching on the corners of my consciousness.

I had to do something.

I still had my pepper spray, but if my bugs couldn't get past the seal and filters in Über's helmet, I doubted my spray could, and he might try to slash me to pieces if I got close.

With a start, I realized I didn't need to attack Über directly. Just like in the sparring session earlier, I only needed to distract him for a moment. Misdirection was my weapon.

I ordered my first swarm to divert from trying to find chinks in Über's armor and take flight, forming a dense living barrier all around him and congregating on his helmet, effectively blinding him even as he wiped frantically at his faceplate. I cloaked myself in a cloud of bugs, running across the street as fast and quietly as I could manage.

Revenant took the opportunity to regenerate his missing limbs and roll to the side of the disoriented Über's swing, which carved a trench in the concrete where he'd just been. At the same time, I reached the sedan and picked up the only weapon I could find—the piece of metal Über had sheared off the top of the car's rear door, which was about two feet long and shaped like a curved number 7. It would have to do.

Sneaking up behind Über under the cover of my swarm, I gripped the piece of metal with both hands and swung it like a baseball bat as hard as I could at the back of his head.

Über stumbled forwards clumsily, in stark contrast to his flawless technique earlier. He recovered his balance almost immediately, but it wasn't enough. This time Revenant was prepared to strike from his prone position, and his left hand changed somehow, his fingers growing longer and sharpening into silver blades, before he slashed at Über's right hand that was holding the lightsaber.

Revenant's last two sword-fingers caught on Über's heavily armored forearm, gouging deep in the armor and stopping there, but his middle finger blade hit its mark and cleaved straight through the tip of the lightsaber hilt like a hot knife through butter. The part of the hilt Über still held exploded with a loud _pop_ like a fuse blowing out, and he cried out in pain.

Revenant leaped to his feet and immediately followed up with a right hook to Über's helmet that shattered the bug-covered plastic visor and made his head bonelessly whiplash in a half-sickening, half-comedic way like a speedbag. Über dropped to the pavement in a heap like a marionette with its strings cut.

For a frozen second I was afraid Alex had snapped Über's neck or something, but Über scrunched up in pain a moment later, cradling his head and hand. I remembered my first aid training about head and neck injuries, but I was hesitant to get any closer to check if he was okay.

Alex wasn't done, though. With two quick strides, he went around to Über's side and kicked him viciously in the ribs, hard enough to lift him bodily off the ground. Über gave a choked, wheezing cough.

"Revenant, _stop!"_ I shouted. "He's down! If you break one of his ribs, he might puncture a lung!"

Revenant rounded on me, and I flinched back a step, instinctively afraid he would hit me. His body language was beyond wrathful, fully animalistic. His left hand was still transformed into three-foot-long claws like swords, and they splayed out as he flexed open his hand.

"What are you still _doing_ here?! I told you to get Leet!" Revenant raged.

"Leet's down!" I said quickly, backing away further. "I've got my bugs on him! He's just past that corner, he didn't even make it fifty feet! More importantly, are you all right? Are you hurt?"

After a moment, Revenant lowered his hand, transforming it back to normal. "No. Yes. _Fuck_ , that goddamned lightsaber burned. Just—just give me a moment."

Revenant left Über lying on the ground, making his way over to his severed limbs, which were still twitching spasmodically on the ground like a lizard's tail. A few had disturbingly sprouted tendrils that were aimlessly waving about. One by one, Revenant picked them up and reabsorbed them into his body in a grotesque process that looked like masses of worms sliding together.

After he finished doing that, he stood up straighter and sighed. In a much calmer voice he said, "There. Now I'll be fine."

I just stood there awkwardly, staring at him. I didn't even know what to say to that, it was as though Revenant had temporarily lost his mind. "Are you sure? Are you still in any pain?"

Revenant shook his head. "I'm—I wasn't myself, okay? My power puts me in a weird state of mind when I take too much damage. Think along the lines of fight-or-flight instinct, turned up to eleven... Besides, Über shot me earlier with a Tinker gun, even before he knew I was a Brute and could take it. Pretty sure he was trying to kill me just now, too. Fucker deserved to get kicked."

"I guess," I said, sparing a glance at the downed cape in question. "I always did think these two were somewhere between pitiful and despicable."

Revenant snorted in amusement. "Couldn't have said it better myself. I'll stay here and guard Über, you go collect Leet."

"That, uh, might be kind of difficult. I've already been encasing his wrists and ankles in silk," I said sheepishly.

"Whatever. I'm not leaving you alone with Über, so we'll go to him." Revenant said.

Revenant bent over Über, tore off the utility belt he was wearing with his bare hands and tossed it aside, then manhandled Über to his feet. Über groaned and clutched his wounded hand close to his chest, and despite the armor shielding his hand from the worst of the small explosion, I could see that some of his fingers were bent the wrong way. Revenant grabbed him by his left arm like a living shackle, roughly pulling Über along like he was a child throwing a tantrum.

I led Revenant and Über over to Leet, and Über stirred with concern upon seeing the prone form of his friend lying covered in bugs in front of a nursing home.

"Oh, God. What'd you _do_ to him?" Über slurred, sounding almost drunk.

I frowned behind my mask. Über might have been concussed, they'd need to let the PRT troopers and Triumph know that when they arrived.

"He's fine. I'm just restraining him with spider silk," I told Über.

"Get 'em off me! Fuck, they're _everywhere!"_ Leet complained in his annoying, nasally voice, spitting bugs out of his mouth and trying ineffectually to move.

"You deserve worse," Revenant said, using his free hand to frisk the squirming Leet, though this time he was much more thorough than with Über. He ripped away Leet's glossy, carapace-like black backpack and crushed it underfoot. Leet moaned in despair as Revenant destroyed piece after piece of his irreplaceable technology, sparing only the helmet that hid his civilian identity.

I almost felt sorry for Leet—I knew what it was like to have to work around a weak power. Then, I remembered what he and Über tried to do to Revenant, and all the other awful things they filmed themselves doing, and although that thought didn't make me feel good about this, it did make it seem like justice. Über and Leet liked to style themselves as misunderstood underdogs, but they were really just bullies like any other, terrorizing people for their own gain and their audience's sick amusement.

Once he was satisfied, Revenant scooped Leet up with one arm and tossed him over his shoulder. Leet tried to complain, but stopped with a wheezing squeak when Revenant squeezed his chest. I could hear several loud cracks and pops as he did so, which gave me a disturbing mental image of Alex making a living as a chiropractor.

"Shut _up,_ you pathetic little shit. If you stay quiet, I'll let you breathe. Come on, Bug, let's go," Revenant said gruffly.

We returned to the park entrance with our prizes, and I could hear the siren approaching off in the distance.

Despite having committed a bunch of crimes, Über and Leet apparently warranted only a single PRT van. The white-and-green flashing lights flicked off as the purple-striped black van eased up to park a little bit away from us.

The back doors of the van opened up, and two people got out. One was Triumph, the former Wards captain and current Protectorate hero who could manipulate sound into concussive blasts. He was dressed in a skintight Greek-inspired costume that was decorated with lion imagery, including a golden lion helmet and lion's-head pauldrons, and though it might have looked silly on someone else, he definitely had the physique for it.

The other person was a PRT trooper, decked out in chain mesh and body armor and holding an assault rifle. It was impossible to tell for sure behind the face-concealing helmet, but I got the impression the trooper was female.

Revenant unceremoniously dumped Leet on the ground at their approach, and forced Über to his knees.

"Identify yourselves," the PRT trooper said, her voice confirming she was a woman.

"Revenant. Rogue." Revenant said laconically.

"And I'm a hero, going by the temporary name Bug," I said, wilting slightly as everyone's attention turned towards me. "I already told the dispatcher who we were and what we looked like."

Triumph stepped forwards, holding his hands out in a peaceful gesture. "Yeah, Armsmaster briefed the team about you two the other day. Don't worry, Sergeant, I'll vouch that they are who they say."

The PRT trooper relaxed somewhat, but still kept her finger near the trigger of her big gun.

Triumph put a hand on his chest. "Nice to meet you both. I'm Triumph, and this is Sergeant Richardson. Sergeant, let's get these two villains into proper restraints."

Triumph and the Sergeant got closer, and I felt a little self-conscious about how bloody and badly beat up Über and Leet looked, versus how relatively pristine Revenant and I looked.

"Be careful with Über, his hand got badly injured in the fighting, and I think he might have a concussion and maybe whiplash," I warned them.

"They've also got neck wounds from where they cut Bakuda's bombs out. It wasn't either of us who did that." Revenant added.

"Good to know," Triumph said, looking the villains over. _"_ _Eugh,_ his hand really is all messed up, isn't it?"

"This psycho _killed_ my pet and fucking _mutilated_ me!" Über said, still sounding a bit dazed. He kept trying to pull away from Revenant's iron grasp as Richardson put him in special, thick handcuffs that encased his entire hands.

"Don't listen to a word he says," Revenant said coldly, letting Über go when the sergeant was finished. "He tried to use lethal force on me first, _twice,_ and that hand injury came from his own weapon exploding. You can ask Bug or look for any witnesses around here."

I looked quickly between Revenant and Triumph, wondering if I'd be forced to tattle on Revenant about kicking Über while he was down, but Triumph only nodded. "We'll definitely want to get your side of the story, especially concerning the explosions reported on 6th street. Besides that, I have to say, this was good work, taking useful tools away from Bakuda is _definitely_ welcome. Thanks to her, the city's cops and heroes are only being kept running by caffeine and pure spite at this point. Richardson, can you handle the arrest from here? I want a word with these two capes."

The sergeant nodded. "I'll mirandize them and see about first aid. Those neck wounds are pretty bad."

Triumph gestured for us to follow with a polite sweep of his arm. We did, albeit hesitantly.

Once we were out of casual hearing range from Über and Leet, Triumph turned to face us. "So, I'm not trying to criticize, but this looks like it was a _lot_ more serious of a fight than Über and Leet usually engage in. Can you tell me what happened? Even off the record?"

Revenant chuffed disdainfully. "There's no such thing as 'off the record.' I'll tell you _on_ the record that those two were forced to fight for Bakuda, but Über still shot at me on sight with a weapon that would have killed a non-Brute. After that, Leet managed to get them both free of the bombs before they detonated. Then Über tried to kill me _again,_ even _after_ they were no longer under duress from Bakuda."

"It's true! Über attacked Revenant with a lightsaber. He cut Revenant nearly in half, and cut off his limbs multiple times. I've never seen anything like it," I interjected.

Triumph looked Revenant up and down and gave an impressed whistle. "Lightsaber, huh? I guess I can't be too surprised, coming from the likes of Über and Leet, but I see you've had a speedy recovery from your dismemberment. I heal a little bit faster than usual myself, but it looks like I've got nothing on _your_ regeneration."

Revenant crossed his arms. "The damage may be gone _now,_ but it still stung like a sonovabitch."

Triumph frowned. "Wait a minute, I can buy that you healed up just after getting sliced and diced, but what happened to your clothes? Did you just happen to have a spare costume lying around and change into it last-minute...?"

"No. My power affects my clothes, too." Revenant said, his tone telling Triumph to drop the subject.

Triumph shrugged. "Huh. Well, I've seen powers do weirder, but that's still quite something. Useful, though. Are you a Breaker, by any chance? Never mind, rude question—I'm just glad there doesn't seem to be any lasting harm."

"It doesn't _matter_ that there wasn't any lasting harm. Those two still need to go to the Birdcage for what they've done." Revenant said hatefully, jabbing a finger at the two villains.

I felt like objecting to that, having watched a few of their videos before giving up, but again the image of Über repeatedly dismembering Revenant gave me pause. The idea of them getting a life sentence to the inescapable cape prison didn't sit well with me, but after all they'd done, maybe they _did_ need to go.

"I can't exactly promise that will happen, but I'm pretty sure this would count as their third strike. This kind of extreme violence is surprising, coming from them, but people do terrible things when pushed to the edge." Triumph mused, rubbing his chin.

"Why wouldn't it count as a third strike? They stole and damaged that car over there, and they also released monsters out into the city," Alex said flatly.

Triumph looked up at Revenant in sudden alarm. "Monsters? What monsters?"

"That _'_ _pet'_ Über was so upset about me killing? It was a fucking seven-foot-tall alligator," Alex said scornfully, making air-quotes at the word 'pet.' "Somewhere out there is a giant Cerberus bird, and also a three-foot-long snake-wasp hybrid that I'm almost _certain_ is made up of at least one species that reproduces asexually. I interrogated Leet about it, and he didn't take even _remotely_ proper precautions to prevent any of his creatures from breeding. They also have human DNA in them, so they're a lot smarter than normal animals."

I stared at Revenant in shock, and Triumph seemed to be at a similar loss. Thoughts of the famous S-Class threat Nilbog briefly ran through my head, but Leet wasn't capable of making things like that, was he? Even if he was, I couldn't imagine they'd be nearly as dangerous. All the same, I wondered if I could control something that was both a snake and a wasp. After all, my power reacted at least somewhat to Alex, and he wasn't a bug at all, unless you counted the squirming, worm-like tendrils inside him.

"That's, uh... Wow. I'll definitely call that in," Triumph said, shaking his head. "Oh, man. The Director is going to _crucify_ Über and Leet for letting those things go free. They're the ones that are supposed to be Pokémon, right? I had no idea they still had more after their robbery of the Brockton Zoo. That was a total disaster, even by their standards. They're going to need one heck of a lawyer."

"I hope I won't be needing to get a lawyer too just for defending myself against Über's attempted murder," Revenant said sourly.

"Wait, is that even a thing? Can they sue us for how we captured them? I helped catch a bunch of ABB thugs and Armsmaster never said a word about how I handled that," I said, feeling a familiar distrust of systems and institutional bullshit starting to rise up inside me.

Triumph made a placating gesture with his hands. "Don't worry, I really doubt either of them will press charges. They've got their own legal defense to worry about now. And technically, since you called it in both times instead of booking criminals yourself, it's the PRT and our legal team that takes responsibility for how the arrests are handled after this point, so you're pretty much in the clear, legally speaking. If we found something objectionable in how you handled the villains _before_ handing them in, we'd bring you in ourselves, but I can tell you right now, that's not going to happen here, Bug. This looks pretty cut-and-dried to me."

I cringed at Triumph calling me Bug, and he tilted his head questioningly at me. I noticed he was remarkably adept at getting across his body language, probably from long experience with people wearing masks that covered most of their faces.

"Sorry, it's just that I really hate the name Bug, and I'm worried it's going to stick at this rate. I haven't come up with a real name yet, that's just what the Undersiders and then Armsmaster and Revenant have been calling me." I explained.

"Oh, yeah, picking names is hard. I was really lucky that a good noun like Triumph wasn't taken already," the hero said with a good-natured chuckle.

"Or you can be like me and not give a shit if the name is taken or not," Revenant said curtly.

"Yeah, but you're a rogue mercenary, right? You don't have to worry about things like branding and copyright," Triumph pointed out. "Plus there's the prestige to consider. Sharing a name puts a damper on that, you'd just be one of a crowd."

"I've tried to come up with something unique that fits, but most of the bug-themed names sound weak, stupid, or evil," I said defensively.

"You tied up Leet pretty good with those cobwebs, I saw. Have you considered the name Arachne, from Greek myth? I'm a sucker for Hellenic mythology, as you might be able to tell from my pseudo-centurion getup," Triumph said with a winning smile.

Having that smile directed at me, I was suddenly very glad that my mask made it so that no one could see me blush. "I did consider that name, since it was one of the few good-sounding ones that wasn't taken, but I don't like being associated with someone who was so stupidly proud that she needlessly antagonized the gods, lost a weaving contest, and got cursed to become the first spider for it."

Triumph shook his head. "That's only one version of the myth, and I always hated that version. Strikes me as the kind of thing grownups tell little kids to keep them in line. The other version is a story about censorship—in that version, Arachne actually won the contest against Athena. Not only that, but she did it with a tapestry that showed a bunch of times the gods were cruel. Things like, you know, Zeus going after women, and other gods being sore losers in similar contests with mortals. It's still a story about power and hubris, and Arachne still got punished, of course, but in doing so, she—well, her tapestry's point that the Greek gods are bastards was proven right in the end, so she really got the last laugh, don't you think?"

It was surreal, getting an enthusiastically nerdy lecture about Greek mythology from a superhero, but I'd be lying if I said the story didn't strike a certain chord in me. I'd struggled against cruel, unjust authorities for years, and had only been punished for it, never rewarded or even taken seriously. Before I could second-guess myself, I nodded firmly.

"Okay, then. You've convinced me. I'll take the name Arachne from here on out." I said.

"Wow! I'm honored, truly. Let me be the first to congratulate you on your official debut, Arachne," Triumph said, sounding so sincere it made my heart flutter a bit.

"Sounds a damn sight better than _Bug,"_ Revenant said with a grunt of approval.

I couldn't hold back a small laugh at that. Coming from someone like Alex, that backhanded compliment was the equivalent of high praise.

"Okay then," Triumph said, rubbing his hands together. "I've got to get these villains back to the Rig, call in the bioweapon containment squad, block off a segment of 6th street, and then file a report on all this, but let me know if you need anything. The city's in a lot of chaos right now, and we heroes need to stick together. That goes for rogues, too." he said, nodding respectfully to Revenant.

Revenant gave Triumph a fractional nod. "Bakuda's a danger to _everyone_. I'd be going after her even if Arachne wasn't paying me to help get her hero career started."

Triumph looked between me and Revenant at that comment, seeming a bit nonplussed. "Well, whatever the case, stay safe, you two. You've already seen that humor villains like Über and Leet can become much more dangerous when backed into a corner. I hope you continue working closely with us to put Bakuda away for good."

At that, Triumph gave a half-wave, half-salute in farewell and jogged back over to the van. I watched him go, feeling equal parts tired, jittery, and elated. Triumph wasn't a big celebrity, since he only recently graduated from the Wards program and used a lot of restraint with his power, but he was still one of the strongest heroes in the city, and he'd treated me like I was one of his _peers_. It was a heady feeling.

Revenant gave me a sidelong look. "Even given the situation, I'm amazed that they're just letting us go after we delivered Über and Leet to them in that state."

I cocked my head. "Why wouldn't they?"

"I guess I'm just not accustomed to the whole concept of state-sanctioned vigilantism." Revenant said with a careless shrug.

I frowned. "Independent heroes aren't vigilantes. A vigilante breaks the law to go after villains, independent heroes don't."

Revenant barked out a laugh. "I'm pretty sure the definition changed just like the law did when superpowers came into existence. It's a brave new world we're living in."

I didn't really know what to make of that, so I changed the subject. "So, I'm guessing you want to do all this again tomorrow?"

Revenant paused for a moment before answering. "More or less. Next time, we aren't going to split up, and I don't want you doing any training besides practicing with your power. You've pushed yourself enough today, and tomorrow you won't be at a hundred percent anyway, so it's better to conserve your strength."

I sagged a bit in relief. As useful as the training session this morning had been, it was incredibly brutal.

"So, where and when do you want to meet tomorrow? I'm not sure how long I can get away with skipping school," I said.

"Right, almost forgot about that," Revenant irritably muttered. "I could just pretend to be your parents and call you out of school."

"I'm not sure that would work," I said, frowning. "Your voice sounds too different."

Revenant rolled his eyes. "Aren't you forgetting something? I can look and sound like whoever I want to. All I'd need to impersonate your parents is a DNA sample, like follicles from a hairbrush."

Alex's words took a moment to sink in, but then they hit me like a punch to the gut. The very first thing my mind went to was the memory of mom's old antique hairbrush, which I'd boxed away as a keepsake for the day I could bear to look at it again. I remembered being a little girl, fascinated by the beautiful engraved silver hairbrush that smelled of Mom's jasmine perfume, watching and learning as Mom gently brushed our matching black tresses, still wet from the shower. It would still have some of her hair, I was certain.

Was it even possible? Could I see Mom again?

The thought speared through my defenses, piercing me right in the vulnerable, hidden core of my being. I looked back at Alex, at _Revenant,_ and suddenly felt sick to my stomach. What he was proposing was both a temptation and a violation. The idea of asking _him_ of all people to impersonate my dead mother was something too awful to even consider, but it was still so close to what I'd wanted for the last two years, it took my breath away.

For a brief, shameful moment, I seriously considered lying to him. Acting as though Mom was alive, just so I could see her again.

 _No_. I couldn't. He'd find out, and then he'd lose all respect for me.

I clenched my fists, barely aware I was doing so. How _dare_ he suggest something like that to me in the first place? Even if it was only my dad, what kind of twisted mind would even come up with the idea of taking his body without permission, much less ask his own daughter to help steal it?

"Uh, hello?" Revenant said, cocking his head. "I asked you a question. If you don't want me to do that, whatever. I don't care how you get out of school, so long as you just do it."

I let out a breath. He just didn't get it, not even the slightest bit. It took an inordinate amount of effort to keep in mind that Alex had no idea my mother was dead. He didn't know what that offer would do to me. He didn't know how much he'd hurt me with those simple words, cutting me almost as badly as Emma's worst attacks.

 _It wasn't his fault. He didn't mean it. He didn't know_. I clung to that knowledge, repeating it over and over in my head. It was the only thing keeping me from either blowing up at Alex or starting to cry like a child.

"I could never let you do that," I said, my words coming out thick and stilted. "I'll figure something out, all right? Just don't expect me to run away."

Revenant looked at me, and even though I couldn't see most of his face, and he couldn't see mine at all, I could tell he was trying to figure out what I was thinking. After a long moment, he sighed and said, "Fine. Do what you have to do, Arachne."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Revenant gave me one last look, then turned and walked away, leaving me feeling conflicted.

The aftershocks of Alex's offer plagued my mind all the way back home. I felt off-kilter, as though the ground had tilted beneath my feet.

By the time I found a safe place to change out of my costume and made it to my street, I saw my dad's car was already parked in the driveway. The guilt settled in me like a hunk of granite in my gut, weighing down heavier and heavier as I got closer to the front door. It wasn't quite late yet, but I still felt like I was going to break a nonexistent curfew.

I paused at the creaky, rotted-out first step, then took a deep breath to psych myself up.

I wasn't doing anything bad. I was not a disappointment to my dad. I was a _superhero_. I'd just helped capture not one, but two supervillains today, and I didn't even get a papercut doing so. The training had been way more intensive than the real deal. My dad had already caught me after I'd snuck out the first time, so logically telling him ahead of time and not being out nearly as late would be better.

 _Yeah, right._ I could tell myself all that, but I still hated lying to my dad on a visceral level. The only thing that helped was the knowledge that telling him the truth would be much worse.

I skipped over the rotted first step, and made my way inside.

My dad was in the kitchen, busy chopping lettuce for a salad by the looks of it.

"I'm home," I called out, closing the door behind me.

My dad turned around to look at me, but instead of the disappointment or anger I'd been expecting, he just looked distracted.

"Hey, kiddo. You're just in time for dinner. Want to help me out with the salad?" he asked, then got back to work.

"Sure," I said automatically.

I felt strangely offended at the blasé reaction. Had we really grown so distant that he wouldn't even notice anything weird about me making unprecedented changes to my schedule? His near-total ignorance of my life should be cause for suspicion, not trust.

I made my way into the kitchen, shedding my backpack along the way. Looking at the ingredients yet to be prepared, I picked up the tomato and our dull paring knife and got to dissecting it.

"How was your visit with your new friend?" My dad asked casually while we worked side-by-side.

I hummed thoughtfully. "It was pretty nice. We went to that donut shop near the library, you know, the one called Bixby's? It was a nice change. I felt like I was kind of stuck in a rut there for a while, but then Lisa convinced me to come along with her."

My dad smiled tightly as he tossed the chopped lettuce into a big bowl. "That sounds great, Taylor. I know you've been having a difficult time lately, and I'm so glad you're feeling up to going out and about, I really am, but work today... there's been some talk that it's getting dangerous with the gangs these last few days. I'd prefer it if you stayed out of public spaces for a while, maybe find some other way to exercise for a bit. Maybe yoga?"

I nodded to show that I was listening, but I didn't really feel like agreeing to the yoga idea, it struck me as a slippery slope to never being allowed out to run again. "Yeah. I heard about that from Lisa and other people in town, too. Honestly, I think it's even worse than people are saying. You should be careful, too."

My dad's strained smile grew warmer. "Of course. I'm glad you agree with me on this. You really had me worried Sunday night, and you shouldn't put your dear old dad through that kind of stress. It'll make my hair fall out even faster than it is already."

I laughed a little, even though it was a pretty weak attempt at a joke. Already, my mind was racing ahead to calculate the implications. If my dad was going to keep me basically grounded while Bakuda went on her reign of terror, it would be all the more difficult to find ways to sneak out and fight the ABB.

"Maybe we could rent a movie or something this weekend, have some fun while we stay in and wait for the craziness to die down," I suggested, just to keep the flow of conversation moving.

"That sounds good. And there might already be a light at the end of this tunnel—remember how I mentioned Gerry left the union to go be a henchman the other day? Well, turns out Über and Leet just got brought into custody. He called me back and apologized just half an hour later. Hopefully the heroes will catch this mad bomber soon, too." my dad said reassuringly.

I felt a warm glow rise up inside me at that. I'd already helped make the city a little better for my dad.

"Yeah. I'll take that silver lining," I said, reaching out and giving my dad a one-armed hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we finally arrive at the long-awaited debut of, as the hosts of the inimitable We've Got Worm podcast put it, Taylor's habit of "description-fucking" guys she's attracted to. Unfortunately for her, Triumph isn't interested, and Brian is on the opposing side now. As always, thanks for reading!


	21. Inflammation 3.5

**Inflammation 3.5**

The north end of Brockton Bay was a truly vast area to patrol, filled with abandoned buildings and illicit activity. Alex had multiple lifetimes' worth of memories tying him to this place, giving him practically limitless different avenues to explore. Without Arachne, though, it was like searching for a needle in a haystack, and as usual, all Alex could focus on was the fact that he was ravenously hungry again. After a few minutes of aimlessly wandering around, he decided to put the futile Bakuda search on hold and focus once again on finding someone to eat.

Alex was sick and fucking tired of this gnawing, insistent, _constant_ hunger. It wasn't quite as torturously painful anymore, but it was still a maddening temptation that haunted him every second of every minute of every hour of every day. It was one thing to put up with it in the moment, but enduring it in perpetuity was _exhausting_. Had he been dumber or weaker, he'd probably have snapped by now and just started consuming people at random like some brainless Hollywood monster.

Going on a killing spree would be lethally stupid, of course, but the thought still made his mouth water. Just _once,_ Alex wanted to experience what it was like to let loose and become whole, to finally be satisfied. Like Sisyphus or Tantalus, every time he seemed to be nearing his goal, some new setback would inevitably crop up.

Looking back, it really was like his life had become one long string of frustrations, humiliations, and setbacks lately. There was the burning rage dragon, the unrelenting compulsion to eat people, the undrinkable water, the ominous brimstone piss, the napalm booby trap, the sassy Japanese stoner, the unintentional electrocution, the bombs in his food, the accidental self-deafening, the freakishly adroit abomination, the retarded Tinker, and to cap it all off, that glorified geek with a fucking lightsaber who had cut through him like he wasn't even there.

The one bright spot was that he was well on his way towards shaping his young apprentice into a minion. That was something, at least.

As useful as the newly-dubbed Arachne was proving to be, the fight with Über had driven home one inescapable fact: Alex's ability to go head-to-head with Tinkertech-equipped opponents, much less combat-oriented Thinkers, was absolutely abysmal. He'd had to resort to using his claws at the end there, he'd simply been too damaged and distracted to remember he'd wanted to keep sandbagging his shapeshifting abilities as much as possible. If he wanted to keep his secrets, he needed better fighting skills.

It wasn't even that Alex was _bad_ at fighting, per se. He had good reflexes and access to the incredible depth of fighting experience that Lung had possessed, both powered and unpowered, plus the skills of Randall, Mason, and Kenneth, who had all been trained in firearms and hand-to-hand combat by the Empire. That had all proven insufficient when Über had opened his can of superhuman whoop-ass, which Alex couldn't help but begrudgingly envy. Granted, Leet's lightsaber was so ridiculously powerful it constituted cheating, and Über's power was so narrow and focus-dependent that all it took to break his rhythm was a well-timed whack from Arachne.

Alex was glad that the kid's quick action had bailed him out, but it was totally unacceptable that he was even put in the position to need combat assistance from a stick-thin teenage girl whose power gave her no physical enhancements whatsoever. It was also a minor miracle that the one body shot Über had taken had gone too high to hit any of the guns and fragmentation grenades Alex stored inside himself. That could have ended poorly for everyone within a radius of about 15 meters.

Fortunately, Alex just so happened to have a built-in method for quickly improving his combat prowess.

He needed to consume another parahuman. Specifically, Victor.

Victor was the preeminent combat Thinker in all of Brockton Bay. His ability was superficially similar to Über's, but much, _much_ more powerful. He was essentially a skill thief, capable of permanently draining someone of their hard-earned talents if given enough time. Victor was a relatively new member of the Empire Eighty-Eight, but he'd already accrued countless lifetimes' worth of mastery, often targeting the 'lesser races.' Apparently no one in the gang saw the irony in that—or, if they did, they kept their mouths shut.

There were many reasons to target Victor specifically, and many reasons not to. Alex had a good long while to lay out the pros and cons before sunset, though, so he started heading vaguely south on autopilot and puzzled through his reasoning.

To start with the advantages, Victor was an expert multiple times over in almost every conceivable realm of combat—including superpowered combat, thanks to his wife and partner-in-crime, Othala, whose superpower-granting ability acted as a force multiplier. Judging from Alex's prior failure to replicate Lung's power, he probably wouldn't be able to use Victor's power to steal additional skills, but that was entirely redundant since Alex already possessed a superior form of that ability. Stealing Victor's vast library of skills for himself would be an _incredible_ coup, saving possibly years of time that would otherwise be spent gathering those skills incidentally or developing them from scratch.

What's more, consuming Victor would also be a gateway to consuming Othala. Even though the Empire's leadership had some real heavyweights, Othala stood out in that power-granting capes were uncommon and in high demand, and capes who could truly heal others were even _more_ rare and sought-after, and she could do both. That made her the most strategically valuable and irreplaceable asset the Empire possessed by far.

Ordinarily, Alex wouldn't really care about going out of his way to kick over the Empire's little sandcastle, but with Lung dead, the Empire was too strong. Bakuda was an effective countervailing force for now, but she was on the fast track to destruction one way or another. Afterwards, the Empire would be able to consolidate their power over the entire city, which was against Alex's interests, because operating amidst a single unified organization rather than several warring gangs meant his own activities would stand out. Taking out both Victor and Othala would be a crippling blow to the Empire's logistical strength; after they were gone, Alex and the other powers-that-be would be able to slowly bleed the Empire down to a manageable size.

That was the big drawback with this whole idea, though. Alex could secretly disappear dozens of humans in back alleys and no one would bat an eye, but _parahumans?_ Those were rare. Important. Valuable. They operated by a whole different set of rules in their own insular little community, even the villains. Alex could keep a low profile or go after capes, but trying to do both at the same time was a recipe for disaster—at least, under normal circumstances. However, Alex was faced with a unique opportunity. Bakuda's indiscriminate breaking of the Unwritten Rules and targeting other parahumans served as the perfect cover and scapegoat for going after other capes.

If there was any time to target Victor and Othala, it was now. If Alex missed this opportunity, there was no telling when the next time would come around.

Alex made his choice, and began his hunt.

The first step was intelligence-gathering. None of Alex's memories held any clues about who Victor or Othala really were or where they lived, so he had to rely on prior knowledge of the Empire's operations.

Despite being linked to several powerful white supremacist families called the 'clans,' the gang didn't operate like a mafia family. It was structured more like a spy ring. Where Lung didn't really bother keeping his operations secret from each other, instead keeping his subordinates in line through fear, the Empire Eighty-Eight had several cells, each operating largely independently of the others, but kept in line by a strict hierarchy.

The only one with the full picture was, of course, the gang's leader, Kaiser. He was definitely not a viable target for Alex, though. Kaiser was too high-profile, and furthermore, it was next to impossible to predict where or when he'd crop up. He didn't dirty his hands with the day-to-day enforcement operations of the gang, instead acting as a powerful reserve weapon and keeping the others in line. His Shaker ability to summon metal blades from any solid surface around him was potent enough that no one could mistake him for being a mere figurehead.

Beneath Kaiser were the chief lieutenants of the gang—the capes that managed other capes. The second-in-command was Krieg, a Brute/Shaker who warped the physical forces around him in his favor. Victor was one of the subordinate capes in Krieg's fiefdom. Krieg was out as a source of information, though, because Alex also didn't have the faintest idea where Krieg was at any given moment. Despite his high status, Krieg wasn't flashy, unlike Kaiser, so he often operated from the background.

Fortunately, Alex _did_ know Krieg's territory extended through the area south of the Towers district downtown, and thus was on the far side of the city from their current warfront in the Docks. Alex headed for Krieg's territory, trusting in Kenneth's memories of being a runner for the gang and making deliveries to a select few outposts.

By the time Alex had finished refining his plans and walked all the way across the city in his bland, blended disguise, he was under the dubiously useful cover of night. Lights blazed everywhere in this more affluent area of the city, rendering him almost as visible as if he were in broad daylight.

However, even in this brighter part of the city, dark corners abounded—especially as Alex moved past the Towers district and into the more commercial parts on the southern edge of downtown, where the Empire's drug depots were situated.

Alex did a wide sweep scouting out the area around the nearest drug depot he knew of, an abandoned, shuttered telephone company office where the Empire had stashed boxes full of heroin, meth, and cocaine. With any luck, it was still in use.

Knowing that the place might still be under guard, Alex approached the back doors under a modified disguise.

It took only a matter of a few seconds to withdraw his anonymously short brown hair into a military-style haircut and change it to the platinum blonde that Marcus had dyed his hair. To complete the effect, Alex rolled up his sleeves and added a selection of Kenneth's and Randall's tattoos, including the sigil that would mark him as one of Alabaster's crew from the other side of town—an ouroboros contorted into an infinity symbol, representing Alabaster's power to restore his body to utterly pristine condition every four seconds. Alex smiled appreciatively at the added touch—he was really getting the hang of improvising new disguises.

Alex furtively came up to the rear door and knocked in a specific pattern—three long, two short, repeated once after a pause. Morse code for eighty-eight. Alex couldn't help but roll his eyes as he knocked out the uninspired passphrase.

Within a few seconds, there was a scraping noise—some kind of barricade being removed, it sounded like—and the door opened a crack, letting a shaft of dim yellow light into the alley.

"We weren't expecting anyone," a deep voice said curtly.

Putting on a show of nervousness, Alex glanced up and down the abandoned alley.

"No surprise, communications aren't exactly super fucking great right now. People are disappearing. Alabaster's main runner went missing, so he sent me instead to arm you guys with some of the primo firepower he refurbished. Look, I'm gonna show you, nice and slow." Alex said in a hushed tone, and opened his leather jacket to show off an improvised bandolier he'd made to hold the grenades and guns he'd pilfered. Normally he'd keep them inside his body, but here they were on full display like he was the archetypal shady fence displaying knockoff Rolexes. To show his bona fides, Alex used two fingers to grab a pistol and held it by the muzzle, offering it to the man grip-first.

"Holy Christ, it's about time we got on a wartime footing over here," the guy said, opening the door wider to reveal himself as a tall, pot-bellied, middle-aged skinhead with an iron cross neck tattoo. He took the offered pistol and expertly inspected it, checking the safety, magazine, and chamber. He looked at Alex with less suspicion, and asked not unkindly, "Hey, are you new? I don't recognize you."

Alex decided to play up the part of the scared rookie, creating a partial simulacrum of Marcus's twitchy body language and mannerisms. "Yeah, name's Bryce. Just came in from Manchester last month and joined up. Shit timing, though. Alabaster told me to get my ass over here, said I had enough firepower to handle myself, but if I'm being honest, I barely know how to use any of this shit, and I just really, _really_ want to get these fucking grenades off me _right the hell now."_

The big man chuckled with good humor. "Every one of us starts somewhere. Since you came all this way, I can take that off your hands and even show you how to use it, if you like."

"Oh man, that'd be awesome," Alex said in relief, and ducked inside.

Alex walked past the big man through a short hall and into the former back room of the office space. Apparently, this was where the boss had been located, since a large, fancy wooden desk was still here, albeit currently serving as the dusty perch of several boxes of contraband drugs. On the other side of the room, there was a brunette girl in her teens or early twenties who would have been a classic girl-next-door beauty had she not been hanging out in a Nazi drug storehouse. She was reclining in a swiveling office chair with her feet propped up on the arm of a green couch, fiddling with her phone.

The brunette glanced up at Alex, gave a respectful nod, then finished up her business on her phone and put it away, leaning forward to study him with interest. Alex resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow at the unexpected presence of the eye-candy. If the Empire wanted their guards distracted by their girlfriends, more power to them.

Alex schooled his features into idle curiosity and turned back to the big man. "So, is it just you two here? This seems like a lot of stuff just for the pair of you."

The skinhead waved a hand dismissively, setting the pistol on the desk. "Just me and Steph for the moment, rest of us got called up north to fight the Chinks. Don't worry though, I've seen real fighting before, and we can make good use of this. Steph's not been initiated yet, but I'll teach her how to handle the guns and grenades, and if we get attacked, we'll be ready."

Alex shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not."

As soon as he was done speaking, Alex lengthened his hands into claws and slashed out, cutting Steph into uneven pieces. Her head rolled from her shoulders, which in turn slumped into her lap, the blood falling in dark sheets over her pale, exposed skin.

Behind Alex, the big skinhead let out a strangled cry that was so warped by anguish it sounded practically inhuman. Alex twisted around to see him grab the pistol and pull the trigger three times in rapid succession to no avail, since Alex had removed the firing pin from that particular gun beforehand. The man then charged Alex, trying to tackle him to the floor. Alex was vastly heavier, though, and all the man accomplished was to make him brace slightly. Alex darted his right arm out in an uppercut motion that impaled the man with all five claws and consumed him, letting the memories wash over him.

In the initial disorienting flash of the memories imprinting, Alex was able to make out that the man's name was Robert, and the girl Stephanie was actually his daughter, rather than his girlfriend as Alex had assumed. He ignored that irrelevant detail, and searched the new memories for anything related to Victor or Othala.

Right away, a quick survey of Rob's life revealed that Alex had hit the jackpot—this man was Robert _Herren,_ of the same Herren clan that Othala came from. Olivia Thuesen, née Herren was her real name, and she was Robert's first cousin, once removed. What's more, he knew exactly where Victor and Othala lived in their civilian guises—he'd actually helped them move.

Rob came from a minor branch of the Herren clan, and his lack of powers had crippled his potential, so in a bid to make himself more useful, he'd joined the Army. After a single tour he'd become disillusioned and fallen into a listless depression, but then the arrival of his unexpected child had changed everything. Rob had lived for his daughter, quite literally—he'd stopped taking as many quasi-suicidal risks after she was born. Rob had served under Iron Rain originally, but after Steph was born, he'd settled in with the more sedate, business-oriented Krieg. When Steph recently came of age, she wanted to work for the Empire too, which made Rob both incredibly proud and justifiably worried. He had taken this do-nothing guard duty assignment as a continuation of his campaign to stall Steph's initiation until he thought she was ready. He'd been intending to protect her, ironically enough.

One memory stuck out above all the rest, as prominent as Lung's trigger event had been, but completely different in feeling. Rob's clearest, most powerful memory was of the transcendental devotion he felt when he first held his newborn daughter. It was like a moment frozen in time, the fulcrum on which his entire life turned. When he first laid eyes on her, all his priorities had been rearranged in an instant. It was strange to Alex—he'd never felt anything remotely like that before, even though he'd already consumed a father, Mason Davies. However, Mason's paternal instinct towards his 7-year-old son, Kieth, had never been even a hundredth as strong as Rob's love for his daughter, and Alex couldn't comprehend _why_.

Alex shook his head to clear his mind. He was letting himself get distracted; if he wasn't careful, he might get too caught up in the memories.

The effort was fruitless. When Alex turned to Steph's body, he was suddenly barraged with memories. Rob's mind was by no means alive, but he'd had so many powerful memories of Steph that information was pouring out just by looking at her corpse. Alex tried to stop thinking about it, but he just couldn't get Rob's memories out of his head. They kept chaining into one another, a cascade of completely useless information that only made Alex feel worse and worse.

Alex looked at the blood and remembered when Steph was a little girl, putting band-aids on her scraped knees and elbows while her little red face was scrunched up with adorable pugnacious bravery. He saw her limp arms and remembered her wrapping her tiny little hands around his finger as a baby. He remembered kissing those little hands, he remembered watching them grow. He remembered countless anxieties and worries of his little girl coming to harm in this dangerous city, worries that had now come true. He even remembered Rob's last moments when he'd witnessed her get cut apart, just two feet away from Alex's own perspective, but the shared memory was rendered entirely different by the sheer horror and loss he felt.

Alex violently twitched, averting his gaze to the wall. These weren't _his_ emotions, just memories, but they left him deeply rattled nonetheless. There was a surreality to the world, as if the line between memory and consciousness had blurred for a moment. The sensation wasn't confusion about who he was, not like with Lung, this was something new and different. Alex started to feel sick inside, nauseated.

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists, reasserting control over his trembling insides. It must have been the image of the body that was doing this to him, in hindsight it had been foolish to try to look into Rob's memories under these conditions. It wouldn't be a problem if he got rid of the body.

Doing his best not to look at her directly, Alex sent out a tendril to snag the body in the chair and consume it. Since Steph's head was no longer attached and he didn't grab it along with her body, Alex didn't get any memories whatsoever from the corpse, which came as something of a relief. He considered testing whether he could reconstruct Steph's memories from her head if he pulverized her brain first, but decided against it. He didn't want Stephanie's memories distracting him, Rob's were already bad enough. Her head was only ten pounds or so of meat anyway. Soon he'd have more meat than he knew what to do with.

All told, consuming roughly four hundred pounds of meat between his two victims had done a lot to improve Alex's condition. The damage Über had done was completely healed in a matter of moments, and Alex had enough left over to put him ahead of where he'd started. In fact, he was pretty sure he'd never been this close to being completely whole and sated before.

It _should_ have felt good. Physically, Alex felt fantastic. He had energy to spare. He felt more solid and strong than ever, even though his mood was inexplicably anxious. His pain and hunger were only a minor nuisance now, rather than clamoring for his attention and distracting him at all times—but now, in their place, he felt an uneasiness and self-consciousness that he didn't like one bit.

Alex felt a frisson of fear. Was this some kind of subtle resurgent personality bleed? What was happening to him?

When he thought of the question in those terms, the answer suddenly became obvious—the reason Alex felt unsettled wasn't just because of Rob's memories, it was also because Steph wasn't a true enemy to Alex. Sure, she was an immature little Nazi in the making, but at least to Rob's knowledge, she hadn't actually _hurt_ anyone beyond shouting slurs and getting into schoolyard fights. Alex didn't _like_ her by any means, but he couldn't muster any burning animosity towards her, either.

In that moment, Alex realized something—he actually _preferred_ consuming his enemies, and not just out of sheer pragmatism, either. He could have consumed any number of helpless homeless people at this point and gotten away with it, just as easily as he'd gotten away with consuming gangsters, but he hadn't.

In retrospect, Alex had rationalized that fewer people would care about criminals going missing than homeless people, but the _real_ difference was that he wanted to target the fuckers who actually _deserved_ it. The likes of Randall and Lung were the absolute scum of the earth, fit to be nothing more than Alex's fodder. He would kill them again in a heartbeat, and he'd do so with a smile on his face. Some people just needed killing, and Alex would be happy to oblige, taking their meat as the fee for the public service he was providing.

The tension slowly receded from Alex, and he calmed down. It centered him to have a clear aim, a simple purpose to work towards. Now that he'd resolved the source of his confusion, he could continue down his path.

With his altered resolution in mind, Alex began the work of burning the office down. He'd done enough for tonight, but tomorrow, he was going to find Victor and Othala, and then he was going to _end_ them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, this chapter is... pretty gory, to be honest. Speaking of sensitive content, I've already posted content warnings before, but I'd like to reiterate that it's going to get worse before it gets better. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that this arc is going to be featuring the breaking point for our dear, oblivious Alex—an action so unambiguously reprehensible and shockingly cruel it breaks through even his superhumanly dense skull. What happens after is the interesting part, at least from my perspective, but be warned the act itself is a fair bit worse than what's featured here.
> 
> Lastly, we have an interlude chapter coming up next! As always, thanks for reading!


	22. Inflammation 3.D

**Inflammation 3.D**

They stood in the front patio of her parents' grand old house, framed by stark white pillars and the dark front door inset with an oval stained glass window that resembled a multifaceted jewel. Before them, a stone-cobbled path led out into an immaculately manicured lawn that was lined with red and purple flowers. It was summer, and the light was almost blinding, like stepping out into the day after being in a dark room. The brightness didn't hurt, though, it only obscured.

She was the only clear thing, but her age was undefined in this place. Younger than she had been, but somehow more knowing, more wise. They stood holding hands, listening to the birds singing.

Danny wanted to be at peace like this, to just enjoy the moment with Annette, but he couldn't stand the distance between them any longer. He embraced her, wrapping his arms around her thin shoulders and pressing his cheek against her warm, dark tresses. He was afraid of squeezing her too hard, yet he burned with the desperate need to hold her tighter and never let go.

She spoke softly into his ear. "I'm so sorry you were forced to deal with my decisions, my mistakes. I wish I could have been perfect for you."

He wanted to say no, but the fact that she was so flawed, so _human,_ it only made him want to stay with her even more.

Gently breaking away from the hug, she held him by the shoulders firmly, and he was transfixed by her dark brown eyes. "I don't want you to waste another _second_ on my account. You need to move forward."

 _No,_ he thought in horrified indignation, unable to stop himself from contradicting her. _It's not a waste. I love you. I don't want to lose you._

He tried to grip her tighter, but her warm hands were already slipping off of his shoulders, and she was already stepping back, no longer looking at him. She looked away, into the scenery, smiling slightly.

He tried to reach out to her, but it was like there was a thousand miles between them. He tried to run towards her, but he didn't get any closer. He tried to call out to her, cycling through desperation, anger, and sadness, but there came no sound at all, and nothing he did would turn her gaze back to him. He knew she wasn't choosing to ignore him—she simply couldn't see or hear him anymore.

There was nothing he could do except follow her request.

The stone path stretched out endlessly in front of him. He followed it, trudging along until the house, the flowers, and the grass all faded away. All that was left was himself, the gray stone path, and the bright, silent void. He stared down at the path as he moved forward endlessly, the aching loss in his chest bending him low. He _wanted_ to do as she asked, but it hurt so much to leave her like this, to leave her forever.

Finally, he couldn't bear it any longer. He straightened up and looked back.

She was still standing there, just as before. No closer, but no further either, looking off into the distance with that small, peaceful smile on her face.

Something shifted inside of him, then. It was as if a piece of him had broken free, yet healed over at the same time. He knew that she would always be there, like this. She was part of the past, now, as unchanging as a scene captured in a painting, and there was a certain comfort in that. He could look back on these memories when he needed to, and recapture some of the happiness and peace he felt here—at the price of the inevitable loss that came with it.

He had to go, for her sake. He moved on ahead, not away from her, but towards what he knew he needed to do, and that was when Danny Hebert woke up.

He took deep, shuddering breaths as he lay on his tear-drenched pillow, opposite the side of the bed that she had always taken, the side which was now empty. He was used to waking up like this by now, waking up alone, tangled in the sheets whose chill he could never quite chase away. However, this was the first dream of Annette he could remember so clearly in a very long time.

Thinking of Taylor, he forced his breathing back under control. He was still crying, but his face slackened, smoothing out from the contortions of pain. Calmly, Danny Hebert pulled aside the covers and got out of bed, going to the master bathroom to wash his face in the sink. He didn't want Taylor to know he'd been crying. He didn't want her to worry about him.

He had to stay strong for her. His prior failure to do so shamed him more than any tears could.

Danny set about his morning routine, the dream he had constantly repeating in the back of his mind. It had been four years since Annette had died, and no matter how adept he'd gotten at hiding his pain and going through the normal motions, the grief of it still blindsided him from time to time.

This dream had been subtly different, though. It felt like the latest in a long line of incremental steps, pushing him just a little bit further towards some unknowable destination. Others said that grief was a process, but after Annette had died, he'd never believed that he'd be able to 'move on,' whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. Danny was missing a huge part of his life—and no amount of moving would ever bring her back.

Danny still had his doubts, but maybe both he and the Annette in his dream were wrong. Maybe there _did_ exist some kind of compromise between forgetting that she ever existed, and staying suspended in that place with her forever, even if he couldn't quite envision what that middle ground would be.

The thought gave him a little rush of nostalgia. He could just picture Annette calling the dilemma he faced a dialectic, consisting of a thesis and antithesis that could only be resolved by synthesis, and after that she would have lost him with all the complicated philosophical gobbledygook. Danny had no idea what half of the things she'd talked about were, but it had been endlessly entertaining to just sit back and listen to her tearing Hume or Kierkegaard or whatshisname a new asshole just as passionately as Danny chewed out Mayor Christner.

Whatever the case, Danny didn't need the wisdom of the ages or Annette's fancy doctorate to figure it out. He had time enough to come to terms with it later. For now, their daughter needed him.

He went downstairs and started cooking breakfast. It was a relatively new addition to the morning routine, something he did to show that little bit of extra care for Taylor. It was an implicit promise to both himself and Taylor that he'd still provide for her, even though he'd failed to do so in his depressive episode following Annette's death. Taylor had emulated that in her own right, often cooking dinner for them in the evenings when Danny stayed too late at work, or was too tired to put together anything more than the bare basics. Danny hadn't intended it to be a trade, but he and Taylor were a bit too alike in that respect.

 _Besides,_ he thought with a little smile, _she's the better cook between the two of us. I've barely progressed past the art of cracking eggs and baking cookies from the box._

It wasn't ideal that mealtimes were basically the only opportunity Danny had to socialize with Taylor, but that dinner the other day had been very encouraging. For the first time in quite a while, Taylor had really _talked_ to him. She had been so reticent, and Danny was at a loss to come up with a solution—even gently pressing for details only caused her more pain. It was fortunate that Taylor seemed to be working through things on her end, but he still wished she would tell him what was going on with her lately.

Danny was in the mood for something savory, so he got started by putting some bread in the toaster and browning up some turkey sausages in a cast-iron pan that was so old its origins were unclear. He set those aside on a plate and added butter to the pan, frying up four eggs in the salty sausage fat and fond to impart extra flavor. Danny may not have known much about cooking, but his friend Kurt's quasi-religious revelations he'd imparted over their past barbecues had at least taught him that much.

Taylor came down the creaky stairs as Danny was dishing the finished eggs onto the toast.

"Morning," Danny said, turning around to put the plates on the table. "You've got good timing today."

Taylor flashed him a forced smile, but quickly averted her eyes. Her reaction alarmed him; she usually only looked this withdrawn when he tried obliquely raising the topic of school, and therefore the bullies.

There was a long, awkward silence, broken only by the soft crunching of Taylor cutting apart her eggs on toast with her fork. Danny grasped for something to say, and finally came up with, "Is there something wrong?"

Taylor looked up at him, a conflicted expression on her face. "Sort of. Not really, I mean, not right now in particular. It's just... it's an ongoing problem, and I'm trying to work my way up to dealing with it."

That answer was so vague as to be completely useless, but Danny nodded and didn't press her for more details. Instead, he said, "Whatever the problem, you can always ask me for advice. I'm here for you, Taylor."

She pursed her lips and reluctantly nodded. "I know. It's just... Yesterday, I was talking to Lisa a little bit. About the bullies."

Danny felt a pang of hurt at that, but he kept a lid on it. He could remember what it was like to be a teenager. Sometimes it felt shameful or impossible to talk to your parents about something, but not to a friend. He knew Taylor was being bullied, but aside from admitting to him that she was being targeted while under the influence of the hospital's drugs back in January, she hadn't said a word about it. Now it seemed the conversation Danny was waiting for and dreading was finally going to happen. At least it would be better than constantly worrying about her, which was often followed by him getting angry at the school, the bullies, and even _himself_ for being powerless to do anything about her problems.

Danny waited to see if Taylor would continue, biding his time by mechanically cutting up his sausages and eggs.

After a few moments of deliberation, Taylor continued. "Lisa said some things to me, and even though I don't really agree with her advice, at the same time, it's like... just being able to talk with her about other things, you know, normal things, it's starting to make me realize just how bad it's gotten."

The words made Danny's breath seize in his chest. "You don't mean—they're not still doing things like what happened in _January_ —"

"No," Taylor interrupted, shaking her head so quickly that her hair bushed out over her shoulders. "Nothing like that. I only meant, it's really driven home how _alone_ I've been at school. They're not pulling anything so big anymore, but the way they put me down, mess with my stuff, isolate me from everyone else... it's been wearing me down more than I realized, before."

Danny didn't quite breathe a sigh of relief, but he felt something in his chest unclench. "I think I understand. When things are really bad for so long, it starts to become normal, but when they start to get a little better, you can look back and realize that you'd been at rock bottom without even realizing it."

Taylor nodded earnestly. _"Exactly_. It's not just Lisa, either. I really appreciate that I can come home and feel _safe,_ you know. I'm grateful you don't push me to relive all the crap I go through at school."

"Of course," Danny said. It was difficult for him to keep the flare of rage he felt from showing on his face. The school had made all kinds of empty promises when he'd threatened to sue, but his little girl hadn't felt safe there, not even _once_. It was infuriating.

Unaware of his tight control, Taylor gave a small chuckle. "I think the thing that made me realize I've really gotten desperate for someone to talk to was that I'd normally never have tried becoming friends with someone like Lisa."

Danny raised an eyebrow at that. "What do you mean, someone like her?"

Taylor smiled as she took a moment to chew some egg. "It's nothing bad, not really. She seems kind of intimidating at first, and she's extremely blunt. It took me a while to figure out she's only bad at social stuff, just like I am."

"You're not bad at social stuff," Danny objected, a little weakly.

Taylor waved a hand. "I mean it, though, she's _such_ a strange person. I know she's good deep down, but she's so full of herself and so oblivious sometimes. It's weird at first, but it's honestly pretty funny once you get used to it."

Leaning back in his chair, Danny mirrored her smile. "Well, I'm glad you made a new friend. She sounds like a real card. You should invite her over to have dinner with us, I'd love to meet her."

Taylor nearly choked on her toast at that. _"Dad,_ I haven't even known her for a week!" she sputtered.

He pressed his hand against his chest in mock offense. "What, are you afraid your old man will _embarrass_ you in front of your new friend?"

"No, it's just... I'm wondering whether she'd turn down the chance for a free meal," said Taylor with an abstracted look.

Danny frowned slightly in concern. "Is she really that poor?"

That was met with a derisive snort from Taylor. "No. Compared to me, she's loaded. That doesn't stop her from being a cheapskate, but she _did_ buy me lunch yesterday. I think that was more for the sake of her own convenience, though."

Danny spread his arms beseechingly. "Then why not return the favor? It's been a long time since we've had Emma over, so why not invite her, too? We could make a night of it."

Taylor winced, averting her gaze. "About that... Emma and I have kind of drifted apart, ever since the bullying started."

Danny's eyes narrowed. He'd suspected that they'd grown more distant, but it was still a damn shame to hear, and not something he'd have expected from the little redhead that had been so close with his daughter for so many years. Annette had remarked more than once that Taylor and Emma were as close as sisters, and Danny had been friends with Alan Barnes, her father. In fact, it had been Alan who had decided to stage a man-to-man intervention to bring Danny out of his spiraling depression after Annette's death, and he had done so by delivering a verbal beat-down. Those had been hard truths to hear, some of the hardest words Danny had ever faced in his life, but he was grateful to have heard them. He wouldn't have thought Alan would raise a daughter who would abandon her friends at the first sign of trouble, but then again, Emma was just a teenage girl, and perhaps the bullying had simply hastened the process of them naturally growing apart.

The important thing was that Taylor was making new friends, now. It was better to focus on the positives.

"Well, the offer's open," he said with a shrug.

"Okay, fine, I'll think about it," Taylor said moodily, stabbing at a sausage link.

"No pressure," Danny said gently. "I know you've had a lot on your mind lately, but I'm really thankful you told me a little of what's going on—even though I'm not happy to hear the school still hasn't resolved these issues."

Taylor looked up at him, seeming conflicted and guilty. Maybe that had been the wrong thing for him to say.

"I..." Taylor began haltingly. "I have a lot to think about. I've been keeping track of what they're doing, but I don't think I'm ready to do anything with the school just yet. I'd like to find my footing a bit, first."

That statement was confusing, to say the least. Taylor sounded like she would have dearly preferred to cut out her own tongue than admit to keeping track, and Danny didn't understand why she was so reluctant to say that after what she'd already admitted was going on. A moment later, he realized she was expecting him to demand she recount _everything,_ right then and there.

It was deeply disappointing that after four months of respecting her boundaries, Taylor still didn't trust him not to push her on this. For the umpteenth time, Danny found himself wishing he could ask Annette for advice.

Outwardly, he simply nodded. "Whenever you're ready, Taylor. I'll take this as far as you want to go, whether it's to the vice principal or the Mayor. Just say the word."

Taylor stared resolutely down at her plate, apparently unable to keep eye contact with him, but a moment later she quietly said, "Thanks, Dad."

They finished the rest of their breakfast quickly after that, in a comfortable silence.

After putting her dishes in the sink, Taylor went upstairs to fetch her backpack, then peeked back into the kitchen. "I'm going to take my morning run to go to school again today. I'll see you when you get home."

"I thought we agreed you'd find other ways to exercise, Taylor," Danny reminded her, trying not to sound too scolding. "The city isn't safe right now. The kidnappings and bombings in the Docks have been getting worse, it's all the news has been talking about."

"I still have the pepper spray you gave me," Taylor said defensively.

"That isn't enough to keep you safe," Danny said, his tone hardening. "I didn't give you that pepper spray just so you'd get overconfident with it. Even _I'd_ hesitate to go out on the streets right now, pepper spray or no. The bus stop is just one street over, so that's fine, but if you need to go anywhere in the city besides school, I'll drive you there myself."

"Okay," Taylor conceded, but she clearly wasn't at all happy about it. "When all this chaos dies down, though, I can still run, right?"

Danny forced a smile. "Sure, so long as you keep sticking to the Boardwalk where it's safer."

Taylor nodded. "I will. I'm going to just wait for the bus, then. Bye, Dad."

Watching her leave, Danny reflected on how difficult it was to impose rules on Taylor. She was so bright, and she wanted so badly to be independent, but she simply didn't have the experience to know how dangerous the world really was. He hated putting his foot down like this, and he knew she hated it too, but the kinds of things that could happen to a skinny young girl out in Brockton Bay with only pepper spray to defend her didn't even bear thinking about.

Danny finished up the dishes and headed to the Dockworker's Association office. The knowledge that there were still bullies preying on his little girl in spite of the school administration's promises gnawed at Danny the entire drive, and the dire news reports on the radio didn't help his mood one bit.

When a little free time opened up at work that morning, Danny decided to call up the school principal to get some answers.

Maybe Taylor wouldn't have wanted him to pry into the situation, but she wasn't the only one affected by this. The school had responsibilities to uphold, and Danny wanted to hear an explanation from them about what was going on—and if they didn't know, then that was proof enough that they'd failed in their duties. He'd agreed in the settlement that he wouldn't sue the school for the horrific ordeal his daughter had been put through in January, but that didn't mean he couldn't take action over any other abuses that had happened before or since.

Even now, the thought of what Taylor had gone through made him feel physically ill. Her unidentified bullies had collected used tampons and other filth from the bathrooms over God-knows-how-long and filled her locker with them, letting it decay over the winter break, then they'd shoved his daughter inside and locked the door. When he'd first learned what had happened, he'd been so outraged that the police had nearly been called on him.

In preparation for the call, Danny took deep, calming breaths. This time, no matter what he found out, he needed to keep his anger focused. Blowing up uncontrollably wouldn't help their case at all, no matter how much the principal had deserved it last time.

Danny picked up the much-abused receiver of his ancient Bakelite office phone, and dialed up the school. Instead of getting the principal, he was routed to the school secretary, an older woman with a high, nasal voice and a clipped tone that came off very irritating.

"This is Winslow High School, how can I direct you?" the secretary said in half a breath.

"Hi, I'm Danny Hebert, Taylor's dad," he said, idly wondering if the faculty would recognize his voice if he'd been shouting instead. "I'm calling to hear if there have been any bullying incidents at school my daughter has been involved in recently."

"One moment." There was the sound of rapid computer keystrokes and mouse clicks over the line. "That's H-E-B-E-R-T, correct?"

"Yes," Danny said tonelessly.

"I'm not seeing anything on file, but Taylor has had unexcused absences for several of her classes over the past three days, and this morning as well," the secretary said with prim disapproval.

Danny felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. The worry and anxiety he'd felt on Sunday night when he'd discovered Taylor had gone on a midnight walk out into the city came roaring back to the forefront.

It was enough to make him wish Taylor had a cell phone, just so he could call her right away, but after Annette died using hers, that simply wasn't going to happen.

"...I didn't know about any absences," he told the secretary, his mouth suddenly feeling dry. "Why wasn't I informed about this?"

"State law is that students are only considered truant after ten non-consecutive days of absence during the semester," the secretary said matter-of-factly.

Danny slammed the phone back down on the receiver, biting back a curse. If there was a single public servant in the entirety of Brockton Bay that wasn't completely fucking useless, he had yet to meet them. _Ten days?_ That was ridiculous.

More importantly, what was Taylor _doing?_ And why was she hiding it from him? It was a truly gutting feeling, out of all proportion. It wasn't just that his daughter was playing hooky and sneaking out while the city burned, it was that she didn't _trust_ him enough to tell him where she was going. He wouldn't have thought she was sneaking off to do drugs or get drunk—she'd never shown anything but disdain and disgust for that—but now he was second-guessing everything.

Danny was going to get to the bottom of this. When Taylor got home, they were going to have a _long_ talk. Before that, though, he needed to vent his temper so he didn't end up breaking his promise to himself and shout at her.

Lucky for him, being the head of hiring for a dying Dockworker's union meant there was no shortage of intransigent morons to yell at.

This was going to be a long Thursday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy, there sure was a lot of foreshadowing, references, and dramatic irony stuffed into this one. The dream sequence was a bit of an experiment, it and the dialogue therein was based almost completely verbatim on a vivid dream I had about someone I've lost. Sometimes translating feelings can be tricky, though, particularly in the abstract, irrational space that are dreams. It struck me as too thematic to miss the opportunity, though, since in canon, Danny's interlude ended on a dream. I hope the dream sequence wasn't too confusing! Whenever Wildbow or any other author springs a surprise dream sequence on me, I fall for them pretty much every time.


	23. Inflammation 3.6

**Inflammation 3.6**

I probably should have been worried about just how liberating it felt to skip school for two and a half days in a row to patrol ground zero of a gang war, but there was no hiding the sheer excitement I felt as my bus neared the stop where I was meeting Alex.

Intellectually, I knew I should feel guilty for lying to my dad and neglecting my studies, and to an extent I did feel a little bad about that, but it was all too easy to just put that aside and focus on what I was doing in the moment.

Last night had passed by in a flurry of research. I'd spent hours on the computer, looking up PHO threads on Über and Leet's capture, as well as the PRT press release detailing my cape scene debut alongside Revenant. I had also spent hours looking up bug senses at his behest, experimenting with my power to find the best combinations to see and hear through.

Amazingly, it had actually _worked_. I'd been expecting the usual headache and disorienting jumble from the bug senses, but even the very first bugs I tried—seeing through jumping spiders—had integrated into my broader swarm sensorium with seamless ease. It completely baffled me. Either I'd never noticed how well they could see when they were all mixed up in the awful cacophony of other bug senses, or I'd drastically improved my skill at using my power during the two months or so I'd been mostly tuning out the bugs' senses besides touch.

I could hardly wait to share my findings with Alex. Searching would be a lot faster with the improvements I'd made.

Finally, I felt Alex enter my range, standing by the bus stop. I didn't examine him too closely, but he seemed different again—every day, his body filled out more and more from the ragged, hollow thing it had been before. Currently, he was almost completely solid, like an actual person instead of the external shell of one.

The bus came to a noisy stop, and I got off. Alex was wearing a different face again, which I found kind of unnerving. This time he was disguised as a tall, middle-aged man with light blonde hair and green eyes, wearing a blue denim jacket. I waited for the others to disperse before addressing him.

"Hey Alex," I greeted lightly. I had to hold back a snort of laughter at the sour look that crossed his face.

"I know I shouldn't be surprised that you can always tell it's me, but I still am, every time," he grumbled in a voice deeper than his usual one. By unspoken mutual agreement, we set off walking down the street together.

I tilted my head, studying his new face. It would have been almost impossible for me to tell without my power. He really did look _nothing_ like his true self. Oddly, though, the most drastic change I noticed was in his expression and body language. He was standing straighter, and for lack of any better way to put it, he didn't look as though he was barely concealing rage or contempt anymore. Instead, he seemed calm, maybe a bit thoughtful. It was hard to decipher. Whatever the case, he seemed more unlike himself than any other time I'd seen him, besides that one time when he was deliberately putting on an act.

"You seem... different today. Did something happen?" I asked.

"What, does my presentation not meet with Your Majesty's approval? Got something against denim?" Alex replied sarcastically.

"I'm not talking about what you're wearing," I said matter-of-factly. "You're not slouching and glaring at things anymore. If I didn't know better, I'd ask who you are and what you did with the _real_ Alex."

He cracked a smile at that. "Sooner or later, you're going to mistake an _actual_ stranger for me, and I'm going to laugh my ass off when that glorious day comes."

"Never mind," I said. Alex was clearly trying to deflect the question, but whatever the reason for the change was, I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Alex dropped his habit of staring at people with that dead-eyed, unnerving intensity, then so much the better. That one change did more to make him seem human than any face he wore.

"I've got some good news," I said, changing the subject. "I've been experimenting with bug senses, and you were right—sorting which bugs to see and hear through makes a huge difference."

"Of course," Alex preened. "It wasn't a hard guess to make. Dragonflies and flatworms both technically have eyes, but they're worlds apart in terms of complexity."

"It wasn't _that_ straightforward," I corrected him. "Dragonflies do have excellent vision, but it's too complicated. They see way, _way_ too many colors, all around themselves, almost the full 360 degrees. It's like trying to see things through a giant kaleidoscope. Jumping spiders are much better. Instead of compound eyes, they have big, forward-facing simple eyes, just like a human. I mean, they can still only see things on a tiny, narrow scale, and some of their pairs of eyes are blurrier than others, and they do have this freaky extra color, but once you get the hang of it, they can actually see things pretty clearly."

Alex raised an eyebrow at my rambling explanation. "It occurs to me that if it weren't for the lunatic bomber on the loose, you'd be absolutely _wasted_ as a superhero. You could be the world's greatest entomologist if you applied your power scientifically."

I shrugged. "There will always be bad guys and bullies to fight. I don't want to sit in a lab when I could be using my powers to make a real difference."

Alex's eyes narrowed at that, and I got the distinct impression that I'd offended him. "Don't dismiss the contributions of science so quickly. Louis Pasteur and Jonas Salk have saved more lives than Legend or Alexandria."

"Who?" I said, confused.

"They were virologists. Pioneers of vaccination. Are your public schools _really_ that useless around here?" Alex said, sounding almost as outraged as I felt towards the institution.

"No argument there," I said with feeling. "I've learned more about gang tags than history in my high school."

Alex made a disgusted noise. "I'll bet. I can't imagine the school district is rolling in revenue from the property taxes around here. Everything outside of Downtown and the Boardwalk is a fucking shithole. Anyway, have you made any progress with the other senses? Smell, hearing?"

"Smell, not so much," I said sheepishly. In truth, I'd given up on that one almost immediately. "Hearing is a lot easier. I used a team of crickets, moths, and katydids to pick out a few words in a conversation. It worked pretty well, as long as I ignored all the high-pitched interference. It's a pretty steep learning curve, but I'm getting there. The trick I found is to focus only on the group of bugs I'm using for a certain sensory input, instead of trying to sense things through my entire swarm at once."

"Think you can search faster this way?" Alex asked eagerly.

"I already have been," I said with growing confidence. "As we've been talking, I've been having larger, faster flying insects like wasps carry around the jumping spiders and katydids to areas of interest. Dragonflies are better, but they're only just starting to emerge from their larval forms in park ponds. They're still pretty rare this time of year."

Alex nodded decisively. "Good. You've really been improving quickly, kid."

I felt a warm glow of happiness at the compliment. Clearly, my performance had managed to buy my way into whatever passed for Alex's good graces. It was kind of like finally winning the tolerance of a very big, very mean stray tomcat. Even the lack of overt hostility was a valuable thing that I wasn't going to take for granted.

Despite his newly defrosted demeanor, Alex was very quiet as we got back into what was fast becoming our normal routine of searching the city. He kept drifting off into a pensive expression. My guess as to what was bothering him was his memories, or lack thereof. After a few more blocks of silence, I decided to try distracting him from whatever it was.

"Hey Alex, did you check on PHO recently? There was a huge discussion about our arrest of Über and Leet." I said.

Alex waved a hand dismissively. "I didn't see it, no. Anything noteworthy?"

"Kind of. A lot of people were disappointed, since Über and Leet were some of the most frequent posters on the site that were actual villains, and a lot of people were fans of their videos, you know? But then the Über and Leet fans and defenders all got shouted down by everyone else. It turned into this big fight between fans of humor villains and fans of heroes, and a bunch of people got banned. I was surprised at how much attention it was getting." I said.

"I'm not. That's just how the internet is. Did it say anything about us?" Alex asked.

"Uh, the main thread had an official PRT statement on the arrest, and it said almost nothing about us. But I did see that they gave full credit to 'the new independent hero, Arachne, and the new rogue, Revenant.' I was happy that I got first billing, but I figured that it was one of the fringe benefits of being a hero instead of a rogue," I said teasingly.

"Either that, or they just listed us alphabetically," Alex deadpanned.

"I prefer my version," I shot back. "Anyway, there was some speculation about who we were, and it was kind of creepy how well the commenters were able to basically stalk us and piece things together. By the end of the thread they figured out that I controlled bugs and you have a movement and regeneration power. I guess someone saw your fight with Über, but no one got a recording of it."

"Thank fuck for that," Alex groused. "It wasn't exactly my proudest moment. I still can't figure out why those two idiots decided to squander Leet's incredible power on doing pointless video game bullshit."

"Besides the lightsaber, Leet's power didn't really seem all that impressive to me," I said skeptically. "He can only build things once, and half the time his stuff blows up anyway."

"You didn't see all that he could do. Leet built a gun that could selectively freeze time for the organic or inorganic matter _inside_ a body. He could make selectively permeable forcefields. He was even able to create those monsters by splicing together the DNA of completely incompatible species. Taken together, that's more diverse than _Armsmaster's_ tech." Alex said, counting off on his fingers.

I blinked in surprise. "Wow. I guess it is kind of a shame he wasted all that potential, but I can't remember him doing any of that in the videos I've seen."

Alex shook his head. "That's because you haven't seen the best stuff from all his jobs gathered in one place before. Individually, his tech is niche at best, but in total, the versatility is amazing. Like I keep telling you, it's not the power you have, it's the context and _how_ you use it that makes you dangerous. I'm more wary of Tinkers and Thinkers than any other kind of parahuman for exactly that reason."

I thought back to the conversations I had with Tattletale, and I couldn't help but agree. "You really _have_ changed a lot in just the last few days, haven't you? You didn't even know about parahumans the first time we met, and now you're teaching _me_ about them, even though I've been a parahuman for months longer than you."

"I'm pretty much studying parahumans nonstop when I'm not with you," Alex said dryly. "That research, plus a bit of good old-fashioned logic, yields a useful output. Go figure."

I shook my head. "It's not just that. It's almost like you're a different person than you were when we first met. Remember when you threatened to _mug_ me?"

"On Tuesday, I was still half _dead_. It made me kind of crabby. So fuckin' sue me." Alex said flatly.

"I guess some things _haven't_ changed, then. You're still a grouch," I said, grinning.

"After I went through all that time and effort to help train you, insults are how you repay me?" Alex said with feigned offense.

"I'm paying you thousands of dollars, and you agreed to the terms! Seven days for you to help me, and seven days I help you in return! Wait, that reminds me, do the past two days count as me using up my days, or you using up yours?" I asked.

Alex shot me an unimpressed look. "Do you _really_ expect me to argue that I'm using up _my_ seven days instead of training you up on your own time?"

"You're right. I don't know why I bothered asking you," I said, rolling my eyes. "Maybe we can count this as neither of us using the other's time."

"Sure, or maybe we can renegotiate," Alex said with a nonchalant shrug. "The original deal didn't really have a provision for mutual benefit or shared goals. I still expect to get paid at the end of the week, of course, but I wouldn't be opposed to making another deal to keep this little apprenticeship thing going."

Alex was so deliberately casual about raising the possibility that I knew he was only pretending not to have a great deal more interest in the idea, and I felt a thrill of victory. It only lasted about two seconds, snuffing out when I remembered the state of my finances. "How do you expect me to pay you? The only money I had was what the Undersiders gave me."

"Catching Über and Leet netted us nothing but goodwill from the white hats, but there's got to be at least _some_ villains with bounties or hero sponsorships in this wretched pit. We could take them down and split the money ninety-ten," Alex said.

"That's so unfair I don't even know where to begin," I replied.

Alex scoffed. "Kid, what the _hell_ kind of expenses do you even have? Your room and board is paid for, and you aren't even taking student loans yet. What would you even want to spend it on, skateboards and movie tickets?"

I let out an incredulous laugh. "What? Do I look like a skateboarding movie buff to you?"

"Well, I don't know your goddamn hobbies!" Alex said, throwing up his hands.

I covered my face, my shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth. "Why did your guesses have to be such _guy_ things, though? Is _skateboarding_ really your best guess for how a teenage girl would want to spend her money?"

"Oh, _bullshit!_ There's tons of girls that like to skateboard!" Alex objected, unable to hide the way his mouth was turning up at the corners.

Alex and I bantered back and forth like that for a while. It was fun, but kind of bittersweet. I hadn't been able to do this kind of good-natured ribbing with anyone since Emma betrayed me, but my rustiness soon wore off and I felt comfortable trading witty comebacks.

I missed this simple companionship so badly. It was amazing how rejuvenating it felt just being able to _talk_ to someone, without feeling like I was under attack or trying to hide things from them.

Alex and I continued like that for a few more blocks, but the conversation gradually died down.

We continued in that vein for most of the morning, conversing in between long stretches of companionable, quiet work. I was still curious what Alex was thinking about, and as the time when I had to go back home drew near without any resolution of that question, I felt comfortable enough to decide to finally broach the sensitive topic of Alex's memories.

"So, do you remember nothing at all of your past life?" I asked him quietly.

Alex's back went rigid, and for a while I thought he was just going to ignore me. After an agonizing silence that felt like hours, but was probably only a minute, he said, "It's not like that. Not exactly. I get... vivid flashes, sometimes. Vague impressions, more often. It's kind of like looking at a Rorschach ink blot test. Do you know what that is?"

"Yeah, the shrink will try to get your brain to interpret the shapes, and figure out your state of mind based on that. Isn't that kind of outdated, though?" I asked.

Alex gave me a wry look. "Yes. My point exactly. It doesn't really work, or give any useful detail. When I think of work, I get images of fume hoods and computers, pipettes and hazmat suits. Sometimes I remember snatches of conversation, things like technical jargon that's too out of context to be useful. I couldn't tell you what lab or university I worked at, or what I was even working on. The connections are there, but there's nothing personal, nothing specific."

I gave the matter some thought. "That's just work, though. I mean, it sounds like you'd have spent a lot of time there, but wouldn't it make more sense to try something more long-term, more personal, like your family?"

Alex's expression hardened. "When I think of family, my first impulse is to say mother and sister, not father or brother. That's a pretty obvious clue. I might still have known my father or had a brother, but maybe they just didn't matter as much. I feel this hazy sort of anger when I think of the concept of 'mother,' but not directly. It's more like... it feels connected to the concept of a harsh tone of voice, and the feeling of holding myself back. That feeling when you're trying not to show any reaction at all, because that would just make things worse."

As Alex described his fragmentary memories of his mother, it seemed less and less like he was actually talking to me. His voice and gaze grew cold and distant, almost robotic, and I felt a pang of guilt. I cleared my throat.

"I'm, uh, sorry to bring it up. I shouldn't have pried." I said awkwardly.

Alex shook his head, his eyes refocusing on me. For a second, I thought he might be angry at me, but to my surprise, instead he smiled. "It's not all bad. I can recall having a sister a little more clearly. I think she was... dependable. Intelligent. Damned if I can remember her name, though."

I was struck by the look on Alex's face. He was still smiling, but it didn't reach his eyes.

Once again, I tried to imagine how amnesia must feel. To not remember your family, but still feel like something was missing from your life—it was tragic, almost like a bereavement. The silence in the wake of his words was stretching uncomfortably, so I felt moved to say something.

"If you ever wanted to track down your family, or find some way to get your memories back, I'll help you, Alex." I said sincerely.

He looked away, adopting an aloof expression to hide his embarrassment. I had to work hard to suppress a laugh at how blindingly obvious his tough-guy act was. "I'll remember that, but it goes without saying that this shit is _personal,_ and will stay between us."

"Of course, I would never—" I began, but Alex abruptly put his hand out in front of me, cutting me off both in sentence and in stride.

 _"_ _Stop."_ he said, freezing in place. I halted, looking all around. There was nothing—just a lot full of weeds and old earthmoving equipment to the left, and a shuttered bookstore on the right.

"What is it?" I asked urgently.

"I hear explosions." Alex said stonily.

I listened, and to my surprise, I could detect the faintest of vibrations rippling across my swarm. It would have been easily dismissed as any number of trivial things, but it was too wide and too simultaneous to be anything but a distant impact.

"Follow me. _Quickly."_ Alex said, roughly grabbing my hand and practically dragging me across the street to the bookstore. The front door had been locked for who-knows-how-long, but Alex simply unlocked it with his finger-tendril trick. A second later, we were both through the door and into the pitch-black store. Curtains and unsold books blocked out almost all light from the musty interior, but I could still dimly make out the checkout counter and shelves.

Alex locked the door behind us. "All right, get into costume. We'll go out the back."

I hurried to comply, untying the sweatshirt from around my waist and revealing the rolled-up top half of my costume I'd hidden underneath. I quickly put it on and shimmied out of my baggy jeans, stuffing it and my glasses into my backpack.

As I suited up in my costume, hiding away some of my most important bugs safely in my armor panel's storage compartment, my heart was pounding from the rush of adrenaline. "Do you think it's Bakuda?" I asked.

Alex tilted his head, listening intently. "Maybe. Going by the frequency, Oni Lee is probably there. Maybe both of them are together. Are you ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," I said nervously.

"We don't have time to do this conventionally, so here's the plan—we'll take the rooftops. I'll carry you on my back. I'll do my best to glide, but it'll still be rough, so you've just got to hang on as best you can. Don't try to talk or you'll bite your tongue. Once we get within range, we go in stealthy. Reconnoiter the situation first, then ambush. We have _one_ chance at a devastating first strike, so make it count, just like we practiced. Hit first, hit hard, go for the eyes. Got it?" Alex asked.

"Yes," I said. There was something bracing about getting reminded of our practice sessions, and a kind of tense readiness came over me. I nodded determinedly.

"Good." Alex said, and before my eyes he came apart into the black and red tendrils I knew were lurking beneath his skin, transforming into his Revenant costume for the first time right in front of me. I made no comment on the horrifying sight, there was simply no time.

We rushed out the back exit of the bookstore, the rusted door making a tortured shriek as we did. Revenant wasted no time in grabbing hold of me and donning me like a backpack. I wrapped my arms around his neck like a stranglehold at his insistence, and he supported my legs with his arms as I wrapped them around his waist.

When Revenant lurched into motion, it was like how I imagined a fast motorcycle would feel. Incredible acceleration with the terrifying lack of a windscreen or backrest like in a car, hanging on for dear life with just my arms and legs.

Revenant quickly disabused me of that comparison when he came against a wall and ran up it onto the building's roof.

When Revenant made the first jump from one roof to the next, it felt like my stomach was left behind. Revenant's arms and legs splayed out like a skydiver's and his tendrils lashed at the air for lift, and much to my amazement, he managed to keep us hanging in the air for a second or two longer than we otherwise would have.

Long before getting my powers, I had wanted to fly. Every little kid did, especially cape geeks like me. For a brief, exhilarating moment, I felt as though I _was_ flying, even as the downward arc of our leap rapidly approached. The impact with the other roof was far slower than a free-fall, and Revenant flexed his knees almost into a crouch on impact, but it was still bone-jarring. My chin hit Revenant's shoulder, and I thought I'd lose my grip and go tumbling, but he shifted his own grip to be firmer and I felt a tendril snaking around my back for extra support like a safety rope.

I shuddered at the unnatural contact, but I wasn't about to complain.

Now that we were on the roofs with few obstructions in his way, Revenant tore off in the direction of the explosions, rapidly outpacing any swarm I tried to gather.

I looked down to see that Revenant's feet were coming apart into clawed tendrils for extra traction. Looking down was a mistake, too, as it soon let me see how high up we were when Revenant jumped and glided to another roof.

Once Revenant got us on fairly flat stretches of roof, everything changed. His long stride was smooth on level ground, probably on purpose, and the sheer speed was incredible.

After what seemed like only seconds, Revenant began to slow down. I could hear the explosions now myself, even over the wind roaring in my ears. In that moment, the danger became all too close and all too real, reminding me of the fight with Lung.

I felt out with my senses, my power now encompassing most of five blocks. I set my swarm to gather, a great dark cloud starting to coalesce in the sky.

This time, I wasn't going to run away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I'm so, so sorry for that Queen Administrator pun. Wait, no, I'm not. Moving on, in this chapter we get a bit of a breather, but things are about to kick off in a big way. Stay tuned for the next chapter, featuring Alex's perspective and the Oni Lee showdown we've all been waiting for!


	24. Inflammation 3.7

**Inflammation 3.7**

Jumping from roof to roof with Arachne riding piggyback, Alex suddenly found himself questioning the wisdom of his course of action.

Lung was incredibly strong, but Oni Lee was _fast,_ which made him a whole different order of problem. Alex could recall all too clearly how agile and unpredictable Oni Lee had been in Lung's memories of sparring and fighting alongside him. The idea of Oni Lee using Bakuda's Tinkertech bombs was the stuff of nightmares, and yet Alex was relying on a teenager with insects to counter that. It wasn't exactly the most reassuring thing to depend on at the eve of battle.

Alex came to a stop on the roof of an outlet mall and let Arachne dismount from him. "Are they in your range yet?" he asked, watching as the bugs in the area churned like diffuse currents in the air.

"Definitely. There's—yeah, that's Oni Lee, my bugs keep duplicating whenever he reappears. He's not alone, he's fighting someone. Several someones. Probably New Wave." Arachne reported.

Alex blinked in surprise. The iconic independent superheroes with public civilian identities were hardly something he'd think Arachne could be unsure about. _"_ _Probably_ New Wave? What do you mean?"

"I mean that there's these big round balls of colors flying around, which I'm _guessing_ is probably New Wave's forcefields," Arachne said tersely. "Like I said, bugs can't see very well."

Nodding, Alex said, "Okay, Arachne. Most potent bugs get priority, keep them discreet. I'll see what I can do to lure Oni Lee to me so you can set up an ambush. Hide up here behind these AC units, and signal me with a bug bite when your swarm is ready and in position to attack."

"Hold on, let me tag you real quick," she said, reaching into her pack and withdrawing a moth, a katydid, and a pair of jumping spiders. She dropped them off on Alex's shoulder.

"Good idea. If you need to communicate something to me, use bug-writing." said Alex.

"I will. Good luck," Arachne said, nodding resolutely.

Alex turned and charged off in the direction of the fighting. A nervous apprehension coiled in his gut, but he steeled himself with the knowledge that he'd dealt with worse already, and this time, he had a plan.

As Alex came upon the fighting, the first capes that came into view were Shielder and Laserdream, both superheroes garbed in New Wave's instantly recognizable two-tone costumes of white, accented with the color of their individual powers. Shielder, a teenage boy with dyed blue hair, was hovering and encased in a translucent blue sphere, occasionally firing off a beam made of the same color of light. His sister, Laserdream, was strafing from side to side in midair, employing walls of magenta light as screens and firing off lasers more frequently.

Alex ran to the edge of the roof of a grocery store, peeking out to assess the fight going on in the street.

The scene below was absolute pandemonium. Brandish was transitioning between her normal body and a yellowish, invincible glowing ball whenever an Oni Lee threatened her, while Flashbang was flinging exploding spheres left and right with incredible accuracy and timing, using them for both defense and offense. Manpower and Glory Girl were acting as tanks, doing their best to prevent Oni Lees from encircling Brandish and Flashbang. Lady Photon was hovering only just above the fray, using her broad purple walls of light to contain explosions and try to box Oni Lee in, and all the while her two children were picking off clones with lasers from above. As a whole, New Wave's teamwork and sheer skill was astounding.

In spite of all that, Oni Lee was somehow winning _single-handedly_ against the family of superheroes. He looked completely uninjured, despite the smell of blood and burnt hair wafting through the air. Oni Lee was teleporting so quickly that he was outnumbering New Wave as they fought to prevent the clones from overwhelming their defense. Most of the explosions were coming from Flashbang's power, but those detonations were interspersed with Tinkertech grenades that Oni Lee clones threw at Manpower, Brandish, and Glory Girl, trying to break past the forcefields and durability powers with tightly-contained effects that included space-warping, pulses of blue lightning, and a twenty-foot-wide bubble of frozen time that trapped the explosive's dust and debris in mid-explosion.

With a start, Alex realized that Oni Lee was _toying_ with them, or maybe just buying time. Was Bakuda somewhere nearby?

From long experience, Alex knew it was pointless to even bother with Oni Lee's clones. Only attacks on his original body had any effect. Alex held still overlooking the roof's edge as he tracked the original Oni Lee and pulled out his Beretta handgun. Alex took a deep breath to calm himself, sighted down the gun, and waited for an opportunity.

Alex could already see that the swarm was coming together around him, while another, more diffuse cloud of bugs gathered over the heads of the combatants on the street, who gave no indication of noticing it. A sudden tickling on his cheek signaled a large bug had gotten under his mask, and he refocused on Oni Lee, deadening his hearing in anticipation of the starting signal.

Only a split second after the bug bit down, Alex opened fire, the incredible noise reduced down to bearable levels.

Down below, the original Oni Lee popped into existence and paused for a fraction of a second, distracted from his fight with Manpower by the rapid gunfire coming from above. He whirled around to see where it was coming from, and staggered when one or more bullets hit him somewhere. The bugs overhead were already collapsing upon Oni Lee like iron filings drawn to a magnet.

Too late. The Oni Lee below was caught by another bullet and collapsed into gray ash, revealing he'd already teleported.

Alex had been expecting that and whirled around, quick as a viper. He let go of his two-handed grip of the gun, and his right hand twisted around underneath his left arm to fire blindly at Oni Lee, while Arachne sprung the trap and swarmed the teleporter with her bugs.

Oni Lee only gave a low grunt as Alex's shot clipped his upper thigh, judging from the sudden spray of blood, but he still managed to duplicate right in front of Alex and strike out with his knife, while the clone he left behind grabbed a grenade from his bandolier.

Alex had thought that Oni Lee might underestimate him because he was using a gun, and this was everything he'd hoped for. He smiled through the pain when the sadistic knife nut stabbed his left arm, and swiped out with his right hand with enough force to decapitate Oni Lee, only to be disappointed when the head and body instantly collapsed into gray ash.

With the original gone from the line of fire, Oni Lee's first clone tossed a grenade at Alex, but Alex simply leaped straight up into the air, gliding to gain some distance and altitude.

While Alex was dodging what had apparently been the same time-stop grenade Oni Lee used earlier, he'd already created two more clones in rapid succession across the roof, the first already pulling a different grenade from his bandolier as the second came into existence.

Alex didn't feel like sticking around to find out what the other grenades did. He focused entirely on escape, jumping another fifty feet in the air and landing on the neighboring roof. Where he'd been standing before, there was an ungodly screech, and the upper corner of the grocery store roof crumpled as if it had been crushed in a giant invisible fist. A moment later the second grenade went off, sending white blobs of foam spraying out, creating acrid gray smoke wherever they touched.

Before Oni Lee could pursue Alex across the roofs, Arachne's bugs finally seemed to be taking their toll on him. His furious scream was cut short and became a choking gag, while the bugs in his eyes drove him completely berserk. He dropped his knive and clawed at his mask's eye-holes so roughly it was like he was trying to gouge his own eyes out. However many insects he crushed, though, thousands of bugs of every description congregated to replace them, and in moments, he became almost completely covered by layers upon layers of bugs. His remaining clones were apparently having problems of their own with Arachne's copied bugs, and both quickly expired.

Alex watched with fierce exultation as Arachne mercilessly took Oni Lee down. She was taking no chances, just like he taught her. Oni Lee staggered and fell, and organized squadrons of large flying insects carrying spiders and lines of pre-spun silk arrived. The countless insects coordinated flawlessly with each other, working collectively to encase his hands and feet.

By this point, Alex was standing well back, just in case. He turned his hearing back up to his previous superhuman levels, and he noted with some smugness there were sounds of confusion and relief below as the horde of Oni Lee clones New Wave was fighting died out completely without the original to replace them.

Laserdream and Shielder were the first to spot Alex.

"Oni Lee's down!" Laserdream called out to her family, sounding more haggard than relieved. "Unknown cape has him covered—he's covered in _bugs!"_

"I'll handle it!" Lady Photon responded. "Glory Girl, with me!"

It was a wise choice, Alex reflected, but only if their assumption that he was the one controlling the bugs had been correct. Lady Photon was the nominal leader and spokeswoman of New Wave, and she had her forcefield formed into a bubble to protect her from insects. For Glory Girl's part, she was only a teenager, but she was both famously impervious to all physical harm, and she also had the ability to terrorize enemies and inspire awe in allies with her mere presence.

Alex frowned as he felt Glory Girl's aura trying to take hold in his mind, imbuing the blonde girl with a disproportionate sense of terrible power and majesty, but a quick mental shift to his body's more detached, mosaic perspective thwarted the attempt to influence his emotions. He still felt the effect, but it was as though he were watching it happen to someone else.

"I'm Lady Photon, and this is Glory Girl. We're with the independent hero team New Wave," Lady Photon addressed Alex in an orator's voice. "Who are you?"

"I'm Revenant," Alex replied. "Before you do anything, don't come any closer. My apprentice Arachne has Oni Lee covered, but he might try to kamikaze if he thinks he can catch one of us in the blast radius. Bakuda might just detonate him remotely anyway instead of letting him get captured."

As he was speaking, a few bugs performing acrobatics caught Alex's attention, and directed him to lines of bugs arranged into a message written by his feet.

COME GET ME.

"On my way," said Alex, turning to leave.

Glory Girl crossed her arms challengingly. "Hold on, we're not just going to let you leave after you _opened fire_ near my family, you lunatic!"

Lady Photon shot her niece a quelling glare.

"Let's all calm down. I'll secure Oni Lee here, and you may _peacefully_ escort Revenant to his teammate," Lady Photon said sharply.

At her words, the forcefield around her vanished, and a large purple forcefield dome formed around Oni Lee.

Without asking for leave to do so, Alex ran across the roofs towards Arachne, feeling annoyed as Glory Girl kept pace in the air above him and loudly asked, "What's your deal, anyway? Are you an Empire Eighty-Eight wannabe or something?"

Alex ignored the flying pest and skidded to a stop as he came up to Arachne's hiding spot, and she came out from behind the AC unit, quailing somewhat under Glory Girl's aura.

"We're not with the gangs! I'm a hero!" Arachne said, holding up her hands in surrender.

Glory Girl floated back a few feet, raising an eyebrow at Arachne. "You _sure_ that's the story you want to go with? From the way you two are dressed, Darth Edgelord and Goth Girl, I won't be letting you out of my sight on general principles until your story checks out."

"Well fuck you too, She-Ra," Alex snarked, enjoying the teen hero's obvious frustration that her aura wasn't working on him.

 _"_ _You're not helping!"_ said Arachne, her voice hitching an octave higher in sheer mortification. She turned to address Glory Girl, who looked more impatient than threatened. "I'm sorry about him, he's not… uh, he doesn't have any people skills. I'm Arachne, I've just started out as a hero, and my costume came out a lot darker than I intended. Sorry about that. Um, anyway, Revenant is a rogue I hired to help me. Armsmaster or Triumph can vouch for us."

Glory Girl relaxed a bit at that, but she still gave Alex a caustic look. "A mercenary? Okay, now _that_ I find easier to believe. I haven't seen a cape outfit look so blatantly evil since Krieg's SS getup. And really, using a _gun?_ Bad choice all around for a cape."

"Who do you think you are, the goddamn fashion police?" Alex scoffed.

Beside him, Arachne cringed so hard that she looked like she would like nothing better than to bury herself in a hole. "Revenant, you're going to get us arrested or something. Could you maybe ease up and let me do the talking here?"

"Knock yourself out," said Alex, waving dismissively.

"Look—Revenant and I, we're a known quantity. Just yesterday we took down Über and Leet, and handed them off to Triumph," Arachne told Glory Girl in a strained conciliatory tone.

Glory Girl frowned thoughtfully. "I thought I heard something about that. Lady Photon would probably know more about it than me."

"Let's get these tedious introductions and background checks over with, then. We still need to get Oni Lee in custody. Here, grab on." Alex said impatiently, turning around so Arachne could ride on his back. She clambered on, and it took only three jumps before they got to the roof where the newly reassembled New Wave were all standing guard in a wide circle around the bug-covered Oni Lee, who was now under the cover of three different forcefield domes that were layered together. Apparently New Wave's fliers had helped Brandish, Flashbang, and Manpower up to the roof in the interim.

Alex set Arachne down on the roof, and her dismount was more graceful this time.

"Thank you," she said, starting to walk towards New Wave.

"Stay right here," Alex said, holding an arm out in front of Arachne. "I don't want you getting caught in the blast radius if Oni Lee lights himself up with something weird that can get past forcefields. The others can come to _us_ if they want to talk."

Sure enough, a few moments later Lady Photon and Manpower were coming over to join them. Both were intimidating in their own way. Alex had to crane his neck just to make eye contact with Manpower. It was no wonder that New Wave had public identities—Neil Pelham, AKA Manpower, was literally seven feet tall and build like a brick shithouse. A man Neil's size would have been suspected of secretly being Manpower if he'd lived anywhere within the same tri-state area as his alter ego, and Alex couldn't help but think he'd have enough meat to eat for a week if he brought Neil down. His wife, by contrast, was about Arachne's height, but she was floating a few inches off the roof, and that was a show of power in and of itself. She dismissed Glory Girl with nothing more than a look and a nod.

"And you would be Arachne, I presume?" Lady Photon said in a neutral tone.

"Yes, ma'am," Arachne answered sheepishly.

Lady Photon's chill demeanor warmed a few degrees as she took in Arachne's appearance, which suddenly made Alex notice how big a difference it made that none of New Wave hid their faces behind a mask. "You're quite young, aren't you? I heard about the debut you made yesterday. I wish it wasn't the case that we needed help from someone so new to this, but these are hard times. New Wave thanks you both for your assistance; had things been dragged out much longer, I'm afraid one of us might have been seriously hurt."

"You're welcome," Arachne said, sounding flattered and flustered in equal measure. "I mean, I didn't do that much personally, my power just happened to have a good matchup against Oni Lee."

Manpower shook his head emphatically. "Not at all, Arachne. You shouldn't put down your own accomplishments like that—believe me, there are plenty of people out in the world who will be happy to do that for you, and they don't need your help to do it."

"He's not wrong," Alex conceded. "You did good today, kid. Just like I trained you to do. You should be proud of that."

There was a brief lull in the conversation, where Arachne seemed too shy or overcome to speak, before Lady Photon spoke up. "Revenant, may I ask why you use a gun, when clearly you have other powers?"

Alex narrowed his eyes at her. "I wasn't about to get _close_ to the fucker if I could avoid it, and besides, I wanted to lure him into Arachne's trap. There was no good reason I _shouldn't_ use a gun."

Lady Photon gave him a disapproving look. "You don't seem to understand the severity of a parahuman using a gun and opening fire in public. You might have hit one of our more vulnerable members, or even a civilian."

"I have better aim than that, and in case you hadn't noticed, Oni Lee was trying to murder you and your family," Alex pointed out in a feigned mild tone.

Lady Photon shook her head. "I'm well aware, but I'm not here to debate with you about whether Oni Lee deserves the use of lethal force. This is about the danger you're bringing on _yourselves_ by acting in such a way. Using guns will make you feared by the public and targeted by villains, and they won't hold back. If Oni Lee were anything but a murderer and a clear and present danger, then you might be facing possible criminal charges as well. Heroes and rogues get a fair bit of leeway, especially in serious situations like this, but ignorance of the law is no defense. My sister is the lawyer of the family, but even I know that much. You really should research the law as it applies to independent heroes before you even consider using that gun of yours again."

Alex scowled behind his mask. He was well aware of the taboo the cape community had for guns, and it was utter bullshit in his opinion, a norm designed to keep up the pretense that most cape fights were relatively low-stakes. He only hoped Arachne wasn't getting any foolish notions from this preachy harridan.

 _"_ _We_ were the ones who took down Oni Lee, and _we_ saved your asses in the process. You're in no position to be impugning our methods," Alex said with haughty disdain.

Manpower stepped in, apparently sensing the tension and holding out his hands placatingly in response. "Far be it from us to discourage another independent hero team. We're just offering advice that has proven valuable to us over the years. New Wave is a fairly big team, but we're still technically an independent hero organization. If anything, we should help each other however possible."

"I'd be happy to help, however I can," Arachne said, stepping forward.

Alex felt a pang of jealous anger at that. Arachne was _his_ investment, and she was only just starting to pay off. He couldn't allow her to be charmed by New Wave's status and their promises of heroism, lest she get poached right out of his grasp.

The conversation was interrupted by a sudden popping crack like a sonic boom, followed by a shrieking cacophony. Everyone flinched or ducked, and all eyes turned towards the bound Oni Lee, but the forcefields were unaffected, and the prone parahuman was still there exactly as before.

Alex looked up instead, and saw the source of the hellish noise coming down at them in a screaming dive.

It had once been a sleek, white, long-nosed private jet, with a pair of turbine nacelles mounted near the T-shaped tail, but it had been grotesquely modified as though by a junkyard mechanic. The tips of the once-elegant wings had been mounted with what appeared to be the engines and rotors from two different helicopters, one painted black and one blue. The plane's landing gear had been deployed but the wheels were all stripped away, and instead, three turrets were mounted where the wheels had once been. Bizarrely, there was also a crudely-welded metal structure mounted on the base of the wings and the top of the fuselage that was topped with a structure that looked like a giant hook crossed with a carabiner.

Alex was frozen by shock and confusion for a moment before three wordless inferences all slammed home one right after the other—first, that this Frankenstein aircraft had to be Squealer's, second, that the beam was aimed way too high to hit Oni Lee himself, so Squealer was either targeting the forcefields or the roof itself, and third, that meant Bakuda had gotten to the Merchants, just like she'd gotten to Über and Leet.

"It's Squealer!" Alex bellowed his realization out loud.

Even as Alex spoke, the aircraft rolled to the side and fired a wide, eye-searing yellow beam that carved a long trench in the roof as it careened past at an absurdly unsafe speed, before seemingly vanishing with another burst of air pressure. Where the beam had intersected with the forcefields surrounding Oni Lee, it broke through all of them except Shielder's blue forcefield. The blue-haired kid dropped like a rock, crying out as his knees buckled beneath him.

Alex barely had time to register a second, higher-pitched shrieking sound before something tiny and fast blurred past in his vision and a tremendous impact shook the entire roof so hard he was staggered nearly off his feet, a giant cloud of dust spraying out from the point of impact on the opposite end of the building.

Acting on pure adrenaline and instinct, Alex grabbed Arachne, all but threw her onto his back with his tendrils already coming out to secure her, then leaped over to the next building.

"Get down and get your bugs on Lee! _All of them!"_ Alex ordered as he put Arachne down.

"On it," Arachne said with clipped focus, dropping to one knee beside him, which put her out of the line of sight from the other roof.

Meanwhile, New Wave's three strongest fliers, Lady Photon, Glory Girl, and Laserdream were working together to evacuate Flashbang, Manpower, and Brandish from the disintegrating roof, the latter in her glowing ball form, while Shielder escaped under his own power. As they left Oni Lee behind, Laserdream, Shielder, and Lady Photon reconstructed their forcefields around themselves and their passengers, leaving the prisoner unguarded save for Arachne's bugs and silk.

The aircraft reappeared in another sonic boom, using its counter-rotating rotors to swoop in like a helicopter. It swung around to hover, the wash of its rotors scattering the dust from the explosion, revealing the bound Oni Lee thrashing wildly against his silk restraints on a tilted section of roof just twenty feet below.

 _"_ _Motherfuckers!"_ Alex hissed. He had no plan, he just knew that he absolutely could not allow Oni Lee to get away. This opportunity would not present itself twice. He took two huge strides and leaped back dozens of feet onto the collapsing roof of the grocery store, running towards the attacking aircraft.

Off to the side, Laserdream and Lady Photon were encumbered from carrying Manpower between them, yet they still managed to spin around in unison and fire their lasers at the aircraft, which shuddered under the onslaught. Lady Photon's purple beams battered the thin aluminum skin, leaving big crumpled dents, while Laserdream's stronger magenta beam seared through a gun turret, cleaving it off completely. The remaining two turrets spun and fired on the heroes, one with the wide yellow beam, the other with what looked like a tightly-focused discharge of blue lightning.

The pair's forcefields failed almost instantly, and it was only by the saving grace of Manpower's electromagnetic shield that the trio weren't blasted into a red mist. Manpower's electricity barrier flared as it absorbed the yellow beam and simultaneously redirected the lightning to crash into the building below, but the force of the twin beams still smashed into him. Manpower was sent careening away, and his wife and daughter were scattered like errant flies from the bone-wrenching force of the huge man being ripped from their grasp. Glory Girl screamed.

If there had been any doubt that the Merchants would follow Oni Lee's lead in using lethal force against the heroes, that attack put it to rest. Alex didn't have the vantage point nor the inclination to find out if Manpower was even alive, or if there was just a bloody crater left of him.

The aircraft's door opened, revealing the Merchant's now-usurped leader, Skidmark, a cadaverous black man in an cheap, ill-suited blue costume with a cape. He cast his hands out wide, and shimmers appeared in the air, condensing into a broad ring of darkening violet at the center and blue at the edges. Alex was slowed by the field of repulsion, his tremendous weight proving counterproductive as the relatively small friction of his feet was overcome by the effect, making forward progress like trying to push two same-charge magnets together. Worse, the Shaker effect coating Oni Lee banished all of Arachne's bugs, which were then caught up in the gale of the aircraft's rotor wash and blown away like so much sand.

There was no time left. It was an instinctual knowledge, like looking down and knowing there was no way to survive a fall from that height. There was simply too much warped space between Alex and the aircraft. Skidmark was already layering more and more fields of repulsion, darkening the existing ones where they overlapped, and he kicked down a rope ladder to Oni Lee, who had partially wriggled free from Arachne's hasty bindings with the aid of a holdout knife. The assassin reached out for the rungs of the ladder, and in that moment Alex was struck by the infuriating certainty that they were going to get away.

Alex was out of time and out of options. He drew out his handgun, knowing it was only a matter of seconds before the turrets turned to face him, and only seconds before there were too many layers of Skidmark's power for the small-caliber bullets to be able to do anything.

Tapping into Rob's army-trained reflexes, Alex expertly took aim with both hands holding the gun steady, flicking off the safety almost as an afterthought. Tendrils sprouted from his feet and dug into the roof as he took a braced stance.

Alex lined up Oni Lee in the gun's sights, squinting against the dust and tremendous wind of the aircraft's rotor wash.

At first, his finger refused to move to the trigger, but an instant later, the roar of the aircraft was drowned out by the sharp cracks of gunfire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry to leave you all with a Deus ex Merchant and a cliffhanger all in a single chapter, but there is a reason I did it this way. First, because Taylor's perspective on these events is going to become very important, and second, because there are a few important hints buried in this chapter that I don't want to get swept away in all the action.
> 
> Also in this chapter, we see a part of the payoff for the hint about the Merchants that was set up back in 2.A, though there is still more to that story. Although the laser weapon and cloaking device Squealer uses here are both parts of other canonical devices of hers, this aircraft is not the same one she would go on to build later in canon, which was more of a giant, sprawling quadcopter design as opposed to this, which is more like a bootleg junkyard version of a V-22 Osprey.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, and good luck sussing out my hints!


	25. Inflammation 3.8

**Inflammation 3.8**

In an instant, the fight against Oni Lee had become a full-scale battle steeped in pure terror and confusion.

I couldn't see anything while ducking for cover on the neighboring roof. Even when I peeked out, there were huge plumes of dust and smoke obscuring everything, and Squealer's plane vanished when it got far enough away. I could still hear things, but there was _too much_ to hear. The noise was absolutely unreal. When the first big bomb had hit the roof, it wasn't a sound so much as it was a _force,_ a huge invisible wall that slammed right through me like I was insubstantial as a ghost.

My body and senses were useless. All I had left was my power.

I curled up on the roof with my armored sections facing outwards, covered my ears, and focused entirely on my power, as though I were leaving my body behind.

The bugs I'd left on Revenant were still there, and their perspective was the best view of the battlefield, bar none. The jumping spider eyes gave me a clearer view than the rest of the swarm, like a tiny, poorly-tuned television screen in a sea of murky, disorienting images. They still had their limitations—Shielder, Laserdream, and Lady Photon all had forcefields up that rendered them a kaleidoscope of incomprehensible spider-colors to me. Anything past a few dozen feet was too blurry to make out, but it was better than blindness.

The spatial awareness of my swarm was more important than all the bugs' senses put together. I could keep track of everyone in the battlefield with the bugs I'd placed on them, with the exception of Glory Girl, whose invulnerability made her entire body feel like slippery glass to my bugs. I was still able to keep track of her as a distant gold-and-white blob flying through the air.

Most importantly, I was able to track Squealer's aircraft. A scant few tiny midges and moths had hitched a ride inside, and tracking them as their vehicle careened through the air gave me at least some indication of what it might do next.

However, I couldn't do anything to help Lady Photon, Laserdream, and Manpower when the gun turrets turned on them with frightening speed and precision. They'd seen it just as I did, but there was no time to dodge the attack.

My heart plummeted into my stomach when my swarm saw the swirling, impossible colors of their forcefields wink out almost instantly, and I felt the few bugs on Manpower die. The bugs on Laserdream and Lady Photon were scattered as the heroes were tossed through the air by the force of the impact that tore Manpower away. I could feel a distant impact in the street through the senses of my swarm, but I'd depleted too much of the area's bugs to get a good idea where Manpower had come down. I diverted a fraction of my swarm to the street below, and quickly found him through my bugs' sense of smell.

Manpower was drenched in blood, and he wasn't moving. I couldn't tell if he was breathing, or even if he was all in one piece, but after a horrifying moment, I was able to detect a faint, thready heartbeat through a fly's delicate vibrational senses.

By that time, Laserdream and Lady Photon had recovered from their aerial tumble, and all of New Wave was starting to converge on the fallen Manpower.

 _They're taking themselves out of the fight,_ I realized with sinking dismay. It would be just me and Revenant.

At the same time, Squealer's aircraft had started to hover over Oni Lee, and a bizarre heat-haze effect bloomed out over the whole area, creating a blue-violet glow wherever it settled that pushed everything away. It soaked into Oni Lee as well, tearing all the bugs away from him that weren't pinned against the inside of his clothes.

I watched with mounting dread as Revenant struggled against the blue-violet force, which I belatedly recognized as Skidmark's power. It would only be a matter of moments before Squealer or whoever else was controlling the turrets noticed him and turned their weapons his way.

I felt through my sense of Revenant's body as he braced his stance and literally planted himself into the roof, his tendrils surging out through his feet like roots, cleaving effortlessly through the tar and metal of the roof like it was soft mud. I could both see and feel him reach into his jacket and withdraw his handgun, then take aim with both hands.

I froze in dawning horror. My power gave me the relative positions of all my bugs, so I knew exactly where he was aiming—directly at Oni Lee's center mass. I remembered the term from his gun handling lecture, the same lecture where he drilled into me that I was _never_ to point a gun at something I didn't fully intend to shoot. The realization was instantaneous.

_Revenant is going to kill Oni Lee rather than let him escape with the Merchants._

I knew it like I knew the sky was blue and water was wet. This was no idle threat, no posture. Nobody was even looking in Revenant's direction.

For the past two days, Revenant had constantly emphasized the importance of striking first and striking hard against Oni Lee. Revenant had even shot at Oni Lee with lethal intent just a few minutes ago, but now Oni Lee's eyes were damaged and swelled almost completely shut by my stings and bites, so he couldn't teleport, and he was too wounded to climb up the ladder into the aircraft in time. He wasn't even aware Revenant was there. He wouldn't stand a chance.

The buzz of my power at the corners of my consciousness became an overwhelming roar. There was no time for me to stop Revenant from shooting, no way for me to send him a swarm-message or cover his eyes before it was too late. My power was hyper-focused on his hands holding the gun, and I could feel in minute detail the tiny twitch as his right index finger started to move towards the trigger.

My power reacted, seizing control of Revenant's finger. It wasn't just completely effortless, it was an immense relief, as if I'd suddenly relaxed a muscle I'd been holding tense. The realization of what I'd just accidentally done startled me so badly that I immediately withdrew control from him, realizing a moment too late what Revenant would do next.

One shot rang out over the aircraft's screaming engines, immediately followed by another and another, but Oni Lee was already toppling over. Revenant didn't stop firing until the gun finally reached the end of its 15-round magazine.

I tore out from the cover I was hiding behind, taking in the immediate aftermath of the terrible scene with my own two eyes.

I was stunned. So much had happened so quickly that I couldn't even think, only stand there like a statue. Oni Lee didn't burst into ash like all the other times he'd been hit. The bugs on his skin didn't duplicate elsewhere as he teleported. He was just lying limp and motionless on the tilted roof, and my remaining bugs on him were being soaked in blood all across his body. The aircraft above started to come around, and—

Oni Lee and all the bugs on him vanished instantly in a blinding light and a warped, ear-piercing shriek that was followed by a crack like thunder.

The aircraft that had been banking around over Oni Lee seemingly staggered in midair, the white paint on its side blackening. A wave of heat rolled over me, even though I was dozens of feet away. The light dimmed, revealing the bright yellow glow of a ten-foot-wide flaming crater where Oni Lee had been. Whatever happened to him had melted the roof, which was dripping into the hole like water, causing more flames to lick up at the sides.

The damaged Merchant aircraft drunkenly wobbled as its pilot fought to get it under control, then the pitch of its rear jet engines increased as it lurched forwards, beating a hasty retreat.

Revenant was also retreating from the scene, and I could see his burned and blackened skin and clothes already being replaced by a fresh layer from the tendrils underneath. He was looking right at me.

I was seized by the sudden apprehension that he knew _exactly_ what I'd done to him. In the eyes of society and the law, one of the worst things a parahuman could do was take control of another person—regardless of the circumstances.

Alex was my ally. My training partner. He had even become something of a mentor, and he had just killed a man—or at least, caused him to die—right in front of me. Part of me wanted to condemn Alex for taking a life, even that of a murderer like Oni Lee. Another part of me was utterly terrified that he would end our partnership, leaving me alone and adrift again. The conflicting emotions tore at my insides.

Revenant leaped over to the roof I was standing on, gracefully arcing through the air and landing right beside me.

"Are you okay?" he asked, and he sounded concerned, but almost _casual_.

I couldn't say anything. Instead, I simply nodded.

Revenant looked back over the shattered remains of the grocery store, then scanned the sky and glanced back to me. "Any sign of Squealer's aircraft?"

I shook my head. The aircraft had already left my range, some six blocks away.

"Good. Now let's get the fuck out of here before anyone else shows up," Revenant said, holding out a hand to me.

I just stared at him. How could he be acting so _normal_ after emptying his gun into another human being? There was no tension nor urgency in his voice. He seemed more _annoyed_ than anything, like Oni Lee blowing up had just been another daily inconvenience.

For the second time since I'd met Alex, I realized that there was something deeply, profoundly _wrong_ with him, and just like his inhuman body, it frightened me.

Finally, Revenant seemed to notice my silent hesitation. He let his hand fall. "Hey. What's the matter with you?"

I shook my head again. "You _killed_ him," I said quietly.

Revenant's spine went rigid. "I did what needed to be done! Come on, Arachne, you may be a hero, but I know you're not _stupid_. You were there with me when we fought Lung. You were there with me when we fought Über. You _know_ the villains will kill anyone who gets in their way! If I'd let Oni Lee escape, then more people would have died at his hands. I guarantee it. He probably would have targeted _us_ first. It was self-defense!"

I took a step away from Revenant. "That wasn't—I don't—"

My half-formed objection was interrupted by the arrival of Lady Photon, whose hands were bloodied and carrying Brandish in her glowing orb form. They set down on the roof, and with a flash of light, Brandish was standing perfectly upright where the orb had been.

New Wave's appearance shouldn't have come as a surprise to me—I'd been aware of their presence all along with my bugs in the back of my mind—but I'd been so laser-focused on Revenant that I'd almost completely ignored them. Checking in on them again, I realized that Manpower, Laserdream, and Glory Girl had gone, and Shielder was still down in the street below alongside Flashbang.

Brandish took a step forward, looking between us and the destruction. "Are you two all right? What happened?" she asked in an accusatory tone.

Revenant smoothly interposed himself between me and the heroines. "Oni Lee broke out of his restraints. Arachne and I fought to prevent him from escaping, and when it looked like we would be successful, Bakuda remotely detonated him. She probably wanted to take me out, but I've already regenerated from the damage. According to Arachne, Squealer's gone. I think this is over, at least for the moment."

A chill ran down my spine. Revenant was technically telling the truth, but in such a slanted, misleading way it was tantamount to lying. I was reminded of the other day, when he omitted the fact that he kicked Über while he was down when explaining things to Triumph. The fact that he was able to come up with a story that skirted around his own culpability while also avoiding any outright lies so quickly and so convincingly was equally shocking and impressive.

Brandish looked between Revenant and me. "Is that so?" she asked skeptically.

 _This is it,_ I thought. _Either I speak up right now and correct the record, or I back up Revenant and share the blame._

That thought only caused the guilt I was holding back to resurface. I'd _allowed_ this to happen. I knew Alex was going to pull that trigger, and I'd had the power to stop him, but I let him kill Oni Lee anyway. I'd been panicked and confused, and in a moment of heightened, illogical emotion, I'd let the fear of Alex finding out I could control him take precedence over saving Oni Lee's life.

Revenant hadn't brought it up, though, and I couldn't even imagine him being so calm if he'd just found out I could control him. Something like that would have pressed _all_ his buttons. He must have just thought it was a moment of hesitation or a stuck trigger or something. If that was true, I could tell Brandish and Lady Photon that it was all Revenant's doing, that I couldn't have stopped him even if I tried. No one needed to know about my own culpability.

I couldn't help but think of ways out for me, but even as I did, I couldn't stomach the idea of selling Alex out. I would never be able to live with myself if I betrayed him like that.

I stepped forward to stand at Revenant's side, trying to keep myself centered by focusing on my swarm as I spoke.

"He's right," I said, and inwardly I was amazed at how level and neutral my own voice sounded, despite my turmoil. "I had a few bugs on Squealer's aircraft. I can detect when it's nearby, even if it's invisible. It's gone now. How is Manpower doing?"

I thought it was a pretty weak deflection, but Lady Photon squared her shoulders and responded, "Glory Girl and Laserdream are taking him to Panacea. They're our fastest fliers. He'll be put right back on his feet in no time."

I resisted the urge to look away from her. Lady Photon's words sounded _too_ confident, and what was left unsaid was that New Wave's most famous member, Amy Dallon—the girl who could save the mortally wounded and even cure cancer with just a touch—couldn't bring people back from the dead. She also couldn't do anything about brain damage, as a part of her power's Manton limitations. Everyone here knew it, with the possible exception of Revenant, though considering all his research, he probably did as well.

"If anyone can heal him, it's Panacea," Brandish said to no one in particular, though there was still an edge to her words.

"Speaking of injuries, is anyone else hurt nearby? Arachne?" Revenant asked, eager to change the subject.

It was a legitimate question, even if his motives were suspect. I spread my swarm out, searching for any injured people in the streets or inside the mostly-destroyed grocery store. Pretty much everyone had already run away by the time we arrived, and there seemed to have been an evacuation underway in the grocery store even before then. There were spots of blood here and there all over the street, but no bodies.

"I'm not finding anything serious," I reported, my tone distant.

"We got lucky. Shielder was able to use his forcefields early on to keep Oni Lee contained while the rest of us arrived," said Brandish.

"What was he even doing here?" Revenant asked.

Lady Photon shook her head. "We don't know. He might have been looking for someone or something in particular, or maybe he just wanted to send a message to the city's heroes."

Revenant scoffed. "Message sent. Bakuda's been kidnapping capes, and now she's even blowing up her own underlings when they fail her. She's going to double down after this mess, mark my words."

An epiphany struck me like a bolt of lightning as I listened to Alex, connections finally snapping into place like separate links closing to form a chain. The reason Alex was so eerily calm, the reason he'd come up with an excuse so quickly, his eagerness to go after Bakuda and the ABB, it was all linked. He'd done all of this before, he'd _said_ all of this before, only he'd said it to _me_ about Lung.

Alex originally told me he thought Lung might have died in the apartment fire. Then, he claimed that his source within the ABB said that Bakuda had killed Lung, but it made even more sense if _he'd_ actually been the one to kill Lung, with Bakuda simply taking over the gang afterwards, and Alex changing his lie accordingly. Alex had admitted after the Über fight that when his body got severely damaged, he went into an intense fight-or-flight mode. Even Tattletale had said the fight between Alex and Lung was going to get uglier, and since they'd already been trying to mutilate or kill each other, there really wasn't anywhere for the fight to escalate from there, except to the death. Armsmaster said he couldn't find Lung's body, but whether that meant Alex had killed him elsewhere or Lung had just burned away, I couldn't guess.

Regardless, what all this meant was that this whole catastrophe—the brewing gang war, Bakuda's deadly bombings, the hundreds of missing people—was set into motion by Alex, and by extension, _me._

The suspicion made me feel nauseous, which wasn't helped by my oncoming adrenaline crash. The shakes were already starting up. At the same time, it almost came as a relief to see all the pieces falling into place. In hindsight, no _wonder_ Alex was so fixated on bringing Oni Lee and Bakuda to justice. He was probably afraid of their reprisals for killing their leader, and he might also feel partially responsible for everything that's happened.

I braced myself and tuned back into the conversation Revenant and Brandish were having, not even remotely aware of how much I'd missed.

"—in absentia, before the Triumvirate gets involved," Brandish was saying.

Revenant crossed his arms. "What the hell kind of sense does that make? Forget the Birdcage, I can't even imagine why Bakuda doesn't have a kill order put out on her already. Why the fuck should we trust the same institution that couldn't even keep _Über and Leet_ behind bars, _twice?"_

"For one, she wouldn't be held in low security like they were, and the sad fact of the matter is that Tinkers get kidnapped and press-ganged all the time," Brandish said darkly. "There's no telling whether Bakuda is being forced to make these bombs by someone else."

"Bull fucking shit," Revenant said flatly. "This is _all_ Bakuda. Anyone with even the slightest familiarity with her would know that. She's been torturing and murdering people _for fun,_ in front of audiences."

"If that's the case, it will come out in a court of law, until such time as a kill order is issued," Brandish said, hard lines forming at the corners of her mouth.

"Yes, I'm aware you're a lawyer," Revenant said, his voice dripping with condescension, as though he was acknowledging the job of a particularly foolish peasant. "The last thing I want is to get caught up in this legal nonsense, so I'm leaving. Are either of you going to try to stop me?"

Lady Photon shot Brandish a look before she could make an angry retort, then reached into a belt pouch and handed me a glossy, white-and-gold card with her starburst logo on it and a phone number. "Here. Take this. There's no need for acrimony between independent heroes. The PRT _will_ try to get your testimony about what happened here one way or another, but I won't try to detain you. I just want you to know that there will be consequences for refusing to play ball with the PRT."

"There always are," Revenant said sourly, then turned to face me. "Arachne, with me."

I resented being called like a dog, but I didn't feel like I had any other choice but to go with him. I _hated_ what Alex had done, or at least I hated the necessity of it and the part I'd ended up playing, but in all honesty, I didn't know if I necessarily _disagreed_ with his rationale.

Revenant held his hand out again, and this time I took it, hauling myself up onto his back in a motion that was rapidly becoming familiar.

I was grateful for the fact that hitching a ride with Revenant prevented us from speaking. It meant I didn't have to feel awkward or guilty for not talking about what just happened, and could distract myself with the next-closest thing to flight.

Revenant zig-zagged his way across the rooftops, as much to avoid the incoming sirens as to not splatter me on impact with roofs that had too much difference in height. After a short while, we came to a stop in the pharmacy parking lot.

I hopped off of him, nearly stumbling on my noodly legs.

"Do we still need to talk about this?" Revenant asked reluctantly, looking around to make sure no one was coming towards us.

"Yeah," I said simply. "But I think I can already guess what you're going to say. I _know_ Oni Lee was the worst killer in Brockton Bay since the Butcher left. I _know_ he would have killed more people if we let him go, maybe even us. I'm just not sure if that makes it better. A man is _dead."_

Revenant cocked his head slightly. "I think I see what you mean. It's a big deal. I'm not surprised this gang war intimidates you—superpowers or not, you're still just a kid."

I shook my head vehemently. "It's not just that. You weren't honest with me about Lung, were you?"

Revenant didn't flinch so much as he suddenly went tense. "Does it matter?" he asked lowly, biting off each syllable.

I tried to meet his eyes, as best as I was able behind the tinted lenses of my mask. "Yes. It does. I would understand it if you killed him, Alex. I was _there_. I know he was trying to murder you in the most painful way imaginable. I just wish you would have told me the truth."

Revenant relaxed slightly. "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead, Taylor. Keeping that from you was nothing personal."

I sighed. "Well, it's _become_ personal, whether we like it or not. After we deal with Bakuda, I think... I think we'll both need to talk about this more. Come to some kind of understanding. Not right now, though. Not while there's still so much at stake."

Revenant nodded. "I... I understand."

By unspoken agreement, we parted ways.

It took longer than I would have liked to find my way back to the bookstore and change out of my costume. I made my way home, anxious of the fact that I already would have been on the verge of being late even before Revenant and I had gone off to the battle. My stomach sank a little upon seeing my dad's car already in the driveway.

I let myself inside, and the excuse I'd come up with died on my lips as I saw my dad.

He stood up from the table where he'd been sitting, his face set in hard lines of worry and undeniable anger.

In his hands was one of the notebooks I'd been using to chronicle the school bullying.

My backpack stuffed with my costume and hero supplies fell to the floor out of my slack fingers. I'd been betrayed by Emma, I'd been betrayed by Alex, and now I'd been betrayed by my own father. School, costume, home—nowhere was safe for me anymore.

It was too much, all too much. I wanted to run and scream and hide and undo this whole day, break it apart into tiny little pieces so that none of this had ever happened.

Upon seeing me, my dad's expression shifted from anger to concern. _"_ _Taylor,"_ he breathed, and before I knew it, he was sweeping me into his arms and I was crying uncontrollably into his shoulder, clinging to him like a lifeline.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Heavy chapter. Taylor jumps to conclusions, some of them right, some of them wrong, and she misses some other things entirely. New Wave has their own suspicions, but they've got bigger fish to fry. In case anyone was wondering, Oni Lee's coup de grace was the bomb implanted in his head, which, as Lucky said, goes off when they die. Bakuda made that one by phase-shifting a portion of Oni Lee into superheated plasma. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on who you ask), this also instantly vaporized the rest of Bakuda's high-tech doohickeys before they could activate and stop time, warp space, spew acid foam, etcetera.


	26. Inflammation 3.9

**Inflammation 3.9**

Alex was full of aimless frustration as he parted ways with Arachne.

On the surface, his primary goal had been met. He'd successfully used Arachne's power to defeat Oni Lee's teleportation, and had used that opening to kill the single largest threat to him in Brockton Bay. Taylor had officially outlived her usefulness, and what's more, she had become a witness to Alex's murder, and she'd even figured out that he'd killed Lung as well. In other words, Taylor had gone from a great asset to a dangerous liability in the space of minutes.

It was an equation with only one solution. Or at least, it _had_ been. Taylor's refusal to rat out Alex to the New Wave heroes had only solidified his reluctance to actually kill her.

If Alex was being honest with himself, his identity as Revenant had grown on him. What had started out as a façade to obfuscate his real personality and activities had somehow become more important to him than his hunting, and even his vendetta against Bakuda. He didn't want to let that identity go now that his mission to kill Oni Lee was done, nor even after Bakuda was dealt with. Taylor was probably to blame for that—although he'd never admit it, he did truly enjoy training and scheming alongside his own personal teenaged sidekick. It was like living out something from a comic book, and more than that, Taylor was the _one_ person Alex actually enjoyed being around for its own sake. He didn't want to lose that, since it was pretty much the only thing of real worth he had to his name.

Now he was in the unenviable position of wanting things to continue as they had been, while also being stuck in a giant mess with an alienated Taylor. Alex still didn't quite understand the nature of her objection to his behavior beyond simple squeamishness about murder, but he was pretty sure that she distrusted him now because he didn't angst over the murder like the whiny little heroes were expected to do when they killed someone. To her credit, at least Taylor didn't dispute that the assassin needed to die, but it was still endlessly frustrating that Alex was getting punished despite obviously being in the right.

The debacle really drove home the necessity of Alex's personal project to consume Victor. If Alex could crack the formula for replicating powers, or even just get access to Victor's incredible skills at manipulation, oration, psychology, and subterfuge, he'd be able to resolve his issues with Taylor in no time, in addition to all of the countless other benefits.

Thanks to Rob's memories, Alex already knew where Victor and Othala—or rather, Lucas and Olivia Thuesen—lived, but he had no intention of attacking the recently-married villains in their own home. Othala's powers granted by touch didn't tend to last longer than a few minutes at most, and sometimes as little as thirty seconds, but that was more than long enough for Victor to use his own power in conjunction with whatever superpower Othala gave him to ruin Alex's day. He wasn't going to leave anything to chance if he could at all avoid it, which meant taking them out separately.

Alex's best bet would be to target their civilian identities. It never ceased to amaze him that so many parahumans trusted in the much-vaunted Unwritten Rules—and their implicit promise of mutually assured destruction—to protect capes from anyone that went after their civilian identity. It still wasn't easy, but if anything, the rules only incentivized Alex to avoid getting caught, not to give up on the opportunity altogether.

Lucas Thuesen's day job when he wasn't being a skill-thief Nazi supervillain was working for the Medhall Corporation as a 'consultant,' which was a fancy way of papering over the fact that he performed at least a dozen different roles in the company, most of them dealing with the illicit side of things.

Rob knew through the grapevine that Medhall kept separate books to obfuscate the fact that they funneled a vastly disproportionate amount of their prescription opioids into dirty Empire-controlled local pharmacies, essentially creating their own immensely profitable vertically-integrated drug pipeline, no Colombian narco-submarines or other middlemen necessary.

One of the jobs Victor did was help keep the shell game going. Rob wasn't personally involved in that, nor in Medhall at all beyond standing guard over the drugs they manufactured, but he did know one of the other people Victor worked with, specifically in his capacity as a Medhall employee—Hank Lyle, a schlubby office drone with Empire connections but no actual Empire membership. He also happened to be Rob's cousin, once again proving the inherent vulnerabilities of family-run organized crime.

From there, the plan quickly fell into place, but he'd have to wait until night to pull it off. In the intervening time, Alex had a lot of daylight to burn, and he knew just what he wanted to do with it. He set off to the abandoned warehouse where he'd experimented with his dog form before—he'd need privacy for this.

The encounter with Oni Lee, Squealer, and Skidmark drove home the need for Alex to develop a sturdy weapon he could use at range, something with precision and dexterity.

Of course, Alex had already proven to be effective at throwing things, like how he'd handled Über, and obviously his gun had taken care of Oni Lee. Against the likes of Squealer, though, the limitations of such tactics became obvious.

At first, Alex considered forming his arm into a kind of compressed-air cannon, adapting the same mechanism he used for gliding, but the problem was one of accuracy and ammunition. Gunnery was too dependent on precision, and his biomass was currently too expensive a resource to go around wasting it as ammunition, and that was assuming he could overcome his body's tendency to want to keep from separating like with his abortive attempt to produce a driver's license.

After more brainstorming, Alex remembered the snake-wasp thing that had stung him, which had unexpectedly given him a new template to work with. The notion of a coiled snake and a stinger gave him an idea—after all, who said his ranged weapon had to detach from his body?

Alex tried simply manifesting tendrils from his arm and unspooling them to the maximum length they'd reach while he was still able to control them, and to his immense satisfaction, he ran out of space in the building well before he reached the limit of his tendrils. He was so strong that he was able to keep three separate tendrils, each stretching out over sixty feet long and as thick around as his arm, suspended in the air as though they were weightless, and lash them around like a brutal flail.

With further development, Alex found it was far stronger and faster to braid a multitude of smaller tendrils through and around each other, forming a kind of thorny, elastic rope that could quickly compress and shoot out with concrete-crushing force. For the tip of the new structure, he integrated features of Lung's claws and the venomous stinger until he came up with a wicked, barbed, metallic blade he internally dubbed the Stinger. At maximum compression, the tendrils bunched up to form a thick arm-like appendage, while the stinger itself became like a harpoon-sword he was carrying in his 'hand.' A few quick swings proved it was a bit clumsy in melee range, but more than made up for it with destructive potential at long range.

While simply shooting things and tearing them apart was hopelessly addictive, Alex was impatient to experiment with his stinger's venom. The base of the blade had large venom glands contained within, with regular holes in the blade proper to deliver it to his targets. If the venom worked on humans or parahumans even remotely like it had worked on him, then anyone even given a glancing cut by his stinger would be either out of commission or dead in record time.

With the arrival of sunset, Alex left the warehouse and put his plan into action.

The first stop was Hank Lyle's house, not far from the border with ABB territory. Alex was in no hurry to get there, so he walked most of the way, in order to ensure he had plenty of time for Hank to go to sleep. Once his phone read 11 o'clock, Alex picked up the pace and made it there before midnight, donning the disguise of 'Bryce' he'd used to fool Rob, just for the sake of any home security cameras that might be in the lower-middle-class neighborhood.

It was child's play to pick the lock and break into the shabby little house. Alex deliberately softened the soles of his shoes so that he moved as silently as possible, which was aided by the floor being carpet over concrete foundation, rather than the floorboards prevalent in many of the poorer, rickety Brockton Bay residences.

Alex needn't have bothered with the stealth, however. Apparently, the pudgy collaborator had undiagnosed sleep apnea or something, because he snored like a malfunctioning chainsaw, interspersed with uncomfortably long pauses where he apparently tried and failed to gasp for breath before letting out another drywall-rattling snore. It had been clearly audible to Alex's enhanced hearing even outside the house, which was how he'd known it was safe to break in, but after letting himself into the bedroom, it was practically deafening. It was so ridiculous, Alex could barely contain the urge to laugh inappropriately.

Alex transformed his arm into the stinger as he stood over Hank's bed. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Covering Hank's mouth with his still-human left hand, Alex simultaneously plunged his stinger into Hank's chest. The man let out a muffled scream as he thrashed into wakefulness, but within seconds, he'd gone still.

Alex waited for a bit less than half a minute, then removed his hand from Hank's mouth. The man didn't move whatsoever.

Intrigued, Alex pulled out his phone and activated the flashlight, shining it into Hank's heavy-lidded eyes. His eyes didn't move at all, but there was still a pupillary response to the light. Alex held his fingers to Hank's throat, and felt a fast, pounding pulse, though that might have been from the terror and not the venom. Alex lifted Hank's arm, feeling that it had gone completely limp, then let it flop back down.

Alex was in no mood to wait around and see if Hank would eventually die, so he chalked up the experiment as a success and consumed the helpless man, pushing aside the new slew of memories and, at long last, obtaining the biomass he needed to completely restore himself.

For a moment, the fact that Alex was finally whole came as such a raw shock, he could hardly believe it. He was complete, fully healed. The last jigsaw pieces slotted into place in his body, and for the first time, his heart began a steady beat. Before, Alex's heart had been too tattered to do anything but lie still and occasionally twitch uselessly.

Elated at the success, Alex consumed his outer layer and replaced it with Hank's shape, clothing him in the outfit Rob had been wearing when he was consumed. Alex picked up Hank's cell phone from the nightstand and trawled through his memories, searching for a good pretext he could use to lure out Victor. He settled on hacking, which was a real danger, but one too complicated to explain over a phone call, and thus easier to fabricate. Alex walked into the hall and punched in Victor's phone number. As it rang, Alex threw himself into a simulacrum to perfectly mimic Hank's vocal patterns.

Victor picked up on the sixth ring.

"Hank, it's _two in the fucking morning_. This had better be good," he said, clearly muzzy from sleep.

"Sir, we've been hacked. I dunno how they did it, but I was woken up by a bunch of emails from the automated system and I couldn't—I couldn't deactivate the server remotely. Before I could even try, I already got sent a message demanding five million for the files. I'm heading to the branch office now," Alex said as quickly as possible, perfectly replicating Hank's anxious, nebbish tone. It was surprisingly difficult to lie when Alex was using his simulacra, but that might have just been because ordinarily Hank couldn't lie to save his life.

Victor sighed. _"Fuck_. I'll be there in half an hour, and for God's sake, don't touch anything until I've had a look."

Just like that, Victor hung up. Either Alex had successfully baited Victor, or he was already calling in the cavalry, but it was probably the former.

One more count of arson and a quick roof-run later, and Alex was unlocking the closed 'branch office' for Victor's little off-the-books operation, which in actuality was a cramped, loosely Medhall-affiliated law office stuffed in the same block of buildings as a hole-in-the-wall laundromat and Mexican restaurant. The Nazis could do low-key when they wanted to, evidently.

Alex had to wait less than ten minutes before he caught the distinctive sound of Victor's BMW approaching, coming around the back entrance. Victor's Beemer pulled up in the alley, the powerful V-8 rumbling to a halt. Alex went to the back door and peeked outside.

Just as he'd predicted, Victor was here alone and out of costume. He was almost as conspicuous _out_ of costume as he was _in_ costume; Victor studiously maintained the appearance of a blonde Aryan übermensch who had just stepped off the pages of Nazi propaganda leaflets, and that in concert with his air of unflappable confidence gave him a presence not unlike a movie star or royalty.

As Victor stood from his car, Alex opened the back door of the office to greet him, and Victor froze for an instant, his eyes meeting Alex's.

In that moment, Alex somehow knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Victor had clocked him. Whatever Victor had noticed, it got him ducking back into his car in less than a second.

Alex immediately chased after him, running around the front of the car, but that delay bought Victor just enough time to pull out a gun, fittingly the same model of Beretta Alex possessed, and fire it point-blank into Alex's stolen face.

Being shot in the face hurt, but Alex could repair the damage in the blink of an eye. That didn't stop Victor from emptying the whole magazine into Alex's head as a diversionary tactic while he ran away, apparently abandoning the car as a lost cause.

Alex gave chase, and held the advantage of raw speed, but Victor was far lighter and more maneuverable. He had less inertia, and used that to great effect alongside his power's ability to make him an expert escape artist.

Alex overshot Victor twice as he tried to overtake the man, but failed to grab Victor if he tried to slow down as well. The skill-thief simply dodged Alex as though he were a drunken buffalo. Victor didn't even have any physical powers at all, yet somehow Alex couldn't catch the slippery fucker. Trying to adjust to the subtle differences of using Hank's shape was doing Alex no favors, either—he had more reach in this form, but also a higher center of gravity owing to Hank's pot belly.

In an astounding display of parkour, Victor veered to the right and ran up the side of the adjacent apartment building, springing off at just the right time to land on top of a dumpster and use that to jump up to the apartment building's second-story fire escape like an Olympic gymnast.

Unfortunately for Victor, Alex could jump much further. He made the jump in a single bound, grabbing onto the exterior railing, which made a clattering, screeching cacophony and bent slightly. Despite the inelegant grab, Alex managed to flip himself over the railing with relatively good grace.

Victor had already bolted down the length of the fire escape by then and was rapidly approaching a window. He raised a leg and kicked out the glass.

Operating on anger and impulse more than the reasoned need for secrecy, Alex pointed his hand at Victor and visualized his new stinger. In less than a second, Alex's right arm came apart into a dozen tendrils that shifted, lengthening, coiling upon themselves, and once they reached peak tension, he shot.

The gleaming silver-and-black harpoon tip covered in wicked bladed barbs seemingly covered the distance between the two instantly, only becoming fully visible as more than a blur when it pierced through one side of Victor's stomach and came out the other, stopping once it had gone three feet or so. Victor crashed to the metal grating with a pained cough, losing his grip on the shattered edge of the windowsill.

Alex bared his teeth in fierce victory, and slowly reeled in the bramble-like tendrils like a fishing line.

Victor couldn't draw breath to scream properly, so he simply made pained little noises and gasps as he was dragged across the metal. His body made weak jerking motions as it started to realize just how grievously damaged it was.

Victor looked up, his eyes meeting Alex's. Hate, fear, pain, and unfocused weariness crossed Victor's face in rapid succession as he slipped into shock and fell unconscious.

Seeing no use in further tormenting an unconscious man, Alex consumed Victor body-first, saving the brain for last. He could feel in minute detail how his stinger came apart and seamlessly transitioned into the feeder tendrils that now held the diminishing remains of Victor in place, branching out inside the body like countless fungal hyphae.

Once his tendrils made their way up into Victor's brain, Alex slowed down, careful to not lose or damage even a scrap of information as he consumed and assimilated Victor into his mind.

Consuming the brain slowly made a world of difference. Waves of information washed over Alex in a much less intense but much more protracted tide, allowing him to be somewhat conscious of the outside world as Victor's life flashed before his mind's eye.

The most shocking thing Alex found was that he was _very_ similar to Victor in his stream of consciousness and patterns of thought, which made it difficult to separate Alex's thoughts about Victor from Victor's remembered thoughts about himself, something that had never happened before with anyone else's memories. Alex was equally fascinated and disgusted by the similarities—he didn't think he'd ended up like Victor at all, even though they had similar personalities and preferences.

Like Alex, Victor wanted to maintain superiority over everyone else, and he had the ambition and ruthlessness to do so. However, unlike Alex, Victor reveled in attention, and wanted his cape persona to be respected, feared, and adored like a king, at least amongst white supremacist circles. Lucas Thuesen's civilian name had become more of a mask than his cape name, just like Lung. For all intents and purposes, his name really _was_ Victor, to his friends and even to himself.

The fundamental challenge Victor faced was ultimately self-inflicted. He'd crippled his own potential as a cape by losing control of his envy and triggering with a useful but weak Thinker power. Ironically, by being jealous of others' abilities and wanting to be the best of the best among humans, Victor had gotten his wish, but in doing so, he had placed himself on the lowest rung among parahumans. He wasn't even one of the lieutenants of the gang, he'd been relegated to being a glorified gofer, a convenient Jack-of-all-trades and little else. The knowledge of that fact _gnawed_ at him, exacerbating his worst impulses.

Alex came back into himself at the memory of Victor's trigger event. Right, Alex had wanted to see if he had all the skills Victor had stolen, but he couldn't do that here and now. Alex put the key into the ignition and started the car, driving a few streets over to avoid any cops coming to investigate the gunfire.

Alex parked the car, and assumed Victor's form, trying to feel out the power using his memories. Nothing came to him. Victor normally felt the skills of those all around him—in fact, that was how Victor had figured out Alex's disguise right away. Alex had registered as a confusing scattershot of contradictory skill levels to Victor's power, interestingly enough, and his sensory range was good enough that if Alex had access to the same power, he should have felt the distant stirrings of other people around, even if he wouldn't have been able to pull on their skills from that far away.

That didn't necessarily mean Alex couldn't gain access to the skills Victor had already taken, though. He could only hope they still worked, even without the power in play.

It didn't take long to decide on what skill to test. One other area where Victor and Alex were different— _really_ different—was Victor's absolute love of music.

Holy mother of God, the _music_.

Victor was a melomaniac that heard and experienced music on an entirely different level than Alex. It was like an emotional synesthesia. Victor could clearly perceive the emotions in music like they were colors in a painting, or like they were words written in a language that he understood and Alex did not. Beautiful melodies and instruments evoked stunningly powerful emotions, and they each invoked a different kind of sensation—the perfect note being drawn out by a cello's bow felt like chills racing up his spine, the titanic thrum of a pipe organ vibrated him down to his bones, and the warbling song of a flute made him feel like he was floating. Victor could also translate his own emotions into music just as naturally as the reverse. He'd probably drained more musicians of their skills than even combat specialists and martial artists, which was his other obsession.

Alex was indifferent to most music that wasn't rock or heavy metal, but there was no going back after this, not that he would ever want to. Victor had been capable of _stopping traffic_ with his singing voice alone, and that was not hyperbole. He'd done it before at street corners, not as a performer for money, but just to show off. Victor had accumulated the raw musical expertise to improvise a masterpiece on any instrument you put in front of him, but at the moment, Alex had only one instrument he could experiment with to see if he'd really gotten access to Victor's skills.

Alex started to hum a series of notes in Victor's melodious voice. It was flawless, as usual. Alex switched back to his own form, then did the same.

Instantly, he knew what was wrong with his voice. He was off-key, and had some very bad habits. He was closer to the baritone range than the bass, but he spoke in a slightly lower-than-natural range of his voice, and as a result over time his voice had become more gravelly than it should have been. Alex had no idea when that habit had formed, but it was embarrassing in retrospect, because his voice wasn't natively _bad_ for singing. He could have sounded so much better all this time if he'd just _tried_.

It took Alex about two minutes to get his voice into proper order, and he was very satisfied with the result. He sounded clearer and more lyrical even while speaking normally, something the English language in particular dovetailed nicely with. He had just stopped experimenting with his voice and was starting to think that he needed to find a piano somewhere when it struck him that he'd gotten so caught up in music, he'd forgotten that he was supposed to be testing whether he'd successfully absorbed Victor's skills.

At first it seemed like the answer was an obvious _yes,_ but something seemed wrong about the skills he'd copied—not in their quality, but in their number. It felt like he had access to fewer skills than he should have. It was something he'd have to investigate on his own, later, but for now, he needed to take down Othala before the Empire figured out what had happened and sequestered her under heavy guard.

As Alex pulled the car out into the street again, he put himself into Victor's simulacrum and called Olivia over the car's phone. She answered after a single ring—she must have stayed awake for him. For Victor, rather.

"Hey, honey. Everything going okay?" Olivia asked with forced casualness.

Alex would have smirked if he'd been himself. This was a code, and thanks to Victor's simulacrum, he knew that responding 'everything's fine' would be an alarm.

"Just great," Alex replied neutrally, giving her the all-clear codephrase.

Olivia sighed in relief. "Good. What's going on?"

"Nothing we have to deal with tonight, O," Alex said reassuringly, using the pet name Victor had for her both in and out of costume. "The boss is going to be pissed at his IT guys, but I nipped it in the bud. I'm heading home."

"Okay. Love you." Olivia said.

"Love you too, babe. See you soon." Alex said, and hung up.

Driving should have been extremely enjoyable this late at night, particularly since Alex didn't give a shit about speed limits, but his enjoyment of the black sports sedan was sharply curtailed by the fact that his weight affected the balance and handling noticeably. The wheels on the left side would even loudly scrape against the wheel wells whenever he made a sharp right turn.

Alex resigned himself to a more sedate drive back, and while in the guise of Victor, he pulled into the garage of a new two-story house in the wealthy residential outskirts south of Downtown. It was oddly nostalgic seeing Victor's house and possessions for the first time and knowing it all perfectly from memory. It really felt like coming home after a long trip.

The house was a mix of expensive modern styles and old classics. Under most hands such a neoclassical blend would either look like pretentious bougie sterility, or at worst garish new-money opulence, but this house had been decorated with a master artist's flair that blended and enhanced the elements of old and new in every way without being overbearing. Blank white walls were contrasted with breathtaking paintings and fascinating art pieces in every natural spot the eye landed. At the same time, the magazine-cover illusion was shattered by obvious signs of inhabitation—a bunched-up blanket on the couch here, a stack of mail on the dining room table there, dishes in the sink, loose change and phone chargers cluttering the marble countertop, and so on.

Alex climbed the stairs to the master bedroom, his anticipation and anxiety growing with every step. The stairs creaked loudly under his weight, no matter how lightly he tried to step. His feet made almost no noise, but his immense weight wasn't something he could hide so easily.

As Alex opened the bedroom door, Olivia was already sitting up in the plush king-sized bed. Victor insisted she didn't have to wear her eyepatch around him, but Alex noted that she'd combed her hair to cover the scar that marred her eye, a sign that she had been feeling nervous. She was still a beautiful young woman, especially while wearing that pearl-colored thigh-length slip dress, but she'd never fully believed Victor when he told her that. Olivia got out of the bed, then rushed over to throw her arms around Alex.

 _"Oof!_ What's the matter, O? Miss me that much already?" Alex said with fond bemusement, wrapping his arms around her.

"I _hate_ when you go out on these late-night calls," she said, trying to sound stern, but instead coming off like she was pouting.

Alex gave a soft chuckle, deep in his throat, and slowly rocked from foot to foot with Olivia in his arms, like a tiny dance. It was achingly familiar to hold her like this. Victor knew how to hold her just right, so they both fit together like puzzle pieces. The simulacrum permitted Alex a natural ease and intimacy with Olivia that he never could have managed by himself; it should have been unbearably awkward to hold a stranger like this, but he only felt comfortable. He savored the sensation, feeling Olivia's smooth satin lingerie and soft, supple skin beneath his hands.

"Nothing to worry about, babe," Alex said, gently nuzzling into the golden hair that draped over her neck. She smelled _amazing,_ sweet and warm and clean, with just the barest floral hint from her shampoo. Alex's mouth watered so powerfully at the delicious aroma that he was forced to swallow twice in short succession, and his new heartbeat started to race.

"I know, but I can't help but worry anyway," Olivia murmured. She pressed her soft body against his, and Alex felt himself hardening against her.

As Alex froze in sudden shock at his own arousal, Olivia made an amused, pleased little sound, and pressed herself up against Alex even more. "Oh? You missed me too, huh?"

Alex's grip slackened, but he couldn't quite bring himself to step back from her. Alex was appalled at himself, his mind racing as his body was trapped by sudden indecision. What the fuck was _wrong_ with him? Was he actually considering this? Did he actually _want_ this? Was this desire coming from Victor's simulacrum, or was it him? Was it _both?_

Oblivious to Alex's inner turmoil, Olivia put her mouth close to Alex's ear, close enough he could feel her warm breath. "Come on. Come to bed," Olivia purred, making Alex shiver slightly. He wanted to surrender to his impulses, but he knew on an intellectual level he should just kill her and be done with it. This was just so _wrong_.

 _Really?_ thought a voice of doubt in the back of Alex's split mind. _So wanting to murder and devour Olivia is just fine, but wanting to fuck her is beyond the pale? That's absurd._

 _There is a difference,_ Alex chastised that part of himself, noticing it was much easier to run an internal dialogue with his mind split by the simulacrum.

Alex's internal critic scoffed. _Get real. I obviously want this, she obviously wants this, so there's no point in denying it. No one will ever find out anyway, so why shouldn't I have some fun before killing her?_

Alex felt like he should have been revolted at his own line of thought, but the temptation was muddying his thoughts. Why _shouldn't_ he take advantage of this situation?

 _Because I'm better than that, I'm better than her, and I'm better than these stupid instinctual urges,_ Alex thought with a flash of contempt, using the emotion to reassert his self-control. He moved his hands up from Olivia's back and hips to hold her around her shoulders and head.

"...Is something wrong?" Olivia asked, sounding a little concerned. "You're so warm. Are you catching a fev—"

Olivia died instantly.

A black spike impaled the base of her skull and came out through her ruined eye, jutting from the palm of the hand Alex was using to cradle her head.

Alex held Olivia as her body went slack, suspended from his arm like it was a meathook. Her arms slid down from Alex's chest, and her left foot twitched spasmodically a few times, catching on the edge of the bedroom rug and flipping it up at the corner. Aside from that and the jutting spike, an outside observer would hardly have been able to tell that Olivia had just died.

As he stood there holding Olivia's body, Alex suddenly realized that he was hesitating to consume her. Usually it was almost automatic, or even uncontrollable when he was really hungry. He wasn't very hungry now, though, so Alex had to consciously decide to do it.

His whole body came apart and enveloped Olivia, and he braced himself for the flash of her memories imprinting into his own.

Alex could remember being killed nine different times. Each memory was a unique mix of agony and fear and horror and hatred, all directed at himself. By contrast, Olivia had died painlessly, blissfully ignorant in her fake, dead husband's embrace, yet somehow, that made Alex feel worse than any memory of being torn to shreds. Why did that make him feel so awful? Shouldn't it have been the opposite?

It made no sense at all.

What made the likes of Olivia, Marcus, and Steph different from his other victims? Why did Alex feel like shit after killing them, and not the others? It wasn't their age or gender, considering Alex didn't care about the equally young Kenneth, nor did Bakuda's womanhood make him want to kill her any less. It wasn't about their relative innocence or guilt, either. Hank had barely been involved in the Empire, even less so than Marcus or Steph, and Alex didn't really care about ending his relatively innocent life—and for that matter, no one else had really cared about Hank, either.

That gave Alex a sudden epiphany. The answer to the riddle was so _obvious,_ now. Alex felt bad about killing people that his other victims could remember loving, even if Alex didn't love them himself. Spencer had loved Marcus, Rob had loved Steph, and Victor had loved Othala, each in their own unique way. Whether Alex felt bad for his victims wasn't a question of personality bleed or whether Alex himself would have liked them, rather it was a question of the memories and familiarity of his other victims biasing his own perceptions. The memories didn't have much time to rub off on Alex, but their effects were cumulative, and the feelings they engendered had been slowly poisoning his mind like a Radon gas buildup.

The idea that _love_ of all the vapid, stupid, insipid emotions would cause Alex so much trouble was downright insulting. Sympathizing with his food was something Alex absolutely couldn't afford. That was a one-way ticket to madness or starvation if there ever was one. At least his problem was straightforward to fix, almost trivially so—all he had to do was stop eating people's loved ones, or at least make sure he destroyed their brains first.

Alex relaxed, a previously unnoticed tension leaving his body. If he stuck to eating his victims' enemies, strangers, or acquaintances only, that was hardly a short list or an undue burden on his part. The sacrifice of possible opportunities was a tiny price to pay compared to the massive relief he felt at being able to avoid the issue of sympathizing with his prey.

Alex refocused on assimilating the new biomass. It was taking much longer than normal, and not just because he'd been distracted. He had his feeder tendrils extruded, but he couldn't quite retract them while reverting to his original body. Relocating his stuff from inside his chest to his artificially-deepened jacket pockets, Alex crushed his body tighter and tighter, wringing himself out like a sponge. Vast quantities of blood, interstitial fluid, bile, and other waste poured out of him as his body compressed itself. Discomfort became outright pain as he progressed until he couldn't compress himself any further, and it still wasn't enough. He'd reached his own personal critical mass, and exceeded it. With nowhere left to put the excess, Alex was forced to disgorge an undigested slurry of Olivia's flesh, clothing, hair, and bone. He knew he could only keep the most essential parts for himself, and _of_ himself.

There was simply no more room for the human parts of Alex. His tendrils were made of far denser stuff than his fleshy human parts, so the necessary final step became a foregone conclusion. With a paroxysm of agony, Alex set his tendrils to consuming his _own_ flesh and organs. He consumed every part of himself that was recognizably human except for his brain, one by one, converting them into more of the black tendrils.

Finally, he devoured his own heart. It only felt fitting to save that for last. 

It wasn't as though Alex needed a heart, anyway—the only thing that stupid lump of cardiac muscle had proven useful for so far was getting him into the most awkward situation of his brief existence.

With that, the last of Alex's tendrils settled into place, and he marveled at what his painful sacrifice had bought. He hardly felt _weak_ before when he was merely whole, but now he was filled to the brim with barely-restrained power, like a spring that had been fully compressed and was just waiting to unleash its energy. His flesh literally felt as solid as a rock, giving him a sense of solidity and power like nothing else. Alex instinctively knew that if he tried to consume any more, he would no longer be able to maintain his current form, no matter what he tried. If he did consume more, his density could go no further, so his volume would inevitably increase instead. In fact, it already _had_ —his enhanced proprioception informed him he was now slightly larger than he was normally, even though he'd kept his original proportions. Apparently, he'd overestimated how much volume he could save by autophagy, but it wasn't too noticeable.

Alex put that thought out of his mind and looked around at the bedroom, refocusing on the task at hand. It was a spectacularly gruesome mess, even by his standards. The entire bedroom was splattered with watery red slime that had little shreds of clothing and shards of bone in it, and was topped with a thicker pile of what was essentially a giant chewed-up mound of reeking offal.

Alex suddenly wanted very badly to be anywhere but in that room. In fact, he wanted to just forget this embarrassing episode had ever happened and get on with his life. To that end, he went downstairs into the kitchen and turned on all the burners of the gas stove to full, then grabbed a matchbox and a liter of vegetable oil. He overturned the bookcases in the dining room and living room and poured oil over the books and carpet.

Alex felt a pang as he went into the living room and saw Victor's most prized possessions—a gorgeous, ebony Blüthner grand piano that cost as much as a new luxury car, as well as a Martin guitar and a Revelle violin.

As much as Alex wanted to take them, he knew he couldn't. It wasn't like he had any place to put them, anyway, unless he wanted to disguise himself as a homeless troubadour that somehow got their hands on instruments that obviously cost a small fortune.

Shaking off the mounting feeling of loss, Alex went into the bathroom to fetch the big jug of rubbing alcohol under the sink. When he caught sight of an unexpected person in motion, he was startled so badly he cursed and jumped back a step, but it was only his own reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Grunting in frustration, Alex retrieved the alcohol jug. He uncapped the pungent bottle and liberally doused a trail of it all throughout the house, then tossed the empty jug in the kitchen. By then, the combined stench of death, alcohol, and gas fumes was becoming unbearable to his enhanced sense of smell, so he changed shape back to Victor and stepped out the front door.

Alex lit the whole matchbox on fire and tossed it inside on the alcohol puddle along with Victor's cell phone and car keys, watching to make sure it went up in flames before shutting the door and walking away. A short while later, Alex heard the explosion echoing across the neighborhood, and saw the dim glow against the low clouds in the night sky, briefly outshining the light from the city.

The brewing gang war had been violent before, but now with the loss of two of the Empire's most valuable assets, it was about to go thermonuclear. Possibly literally, given Bakuda. Whatever happened, though, Alex was confident he had only scratched the surface of his true power, and he was itching to let his full might loose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the likely-to-be-controversial chapter in which Alex hits rock bottom, the nadir of his character development. He's confronted with the fundamental absurdity and contradictions of his decisions, and he comes to the very edge of becoming a complete monster (instead of just a regular monster) before finally, finally realizing he should probably impose some limits on his own selfish behavior. However, as usual, this realization is spoiled when he takes the easy route of avoiding his problems and self-delusion instead of the harder, more emotionally challenging route of confronting them. Homeboy needs a therapist, stat.
> 
> Regarding Alex's attraction to Olivia, he's canonically a hopeless sap when women show even the slightest bit of interest in him. It strikes me as having a strange kind of symmetry that, judging from his painfully vanilla canonical romantic tastes (he started developing a crush on Autumn while playing chess with her, for Christ's sake), Alex seems to be the polar opposite of the stereotypical person who seems totally innocuous and mundane, but secretly has freaky predilections. Fucked-up, evil, and freaky is the mundane status quo for Alex, so it makes a sort of sense that he would get completely blindsided by the unexpected allure of simple, sweet affection. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic and horrifying.
> 
> As a final caveat, let me just say that the views of the characters do not necessarily reflect the views of the author. Alex might be confused by his contradictory feelings and unable to articulate in clear, precise language the myriad reasons why rapists are often treated as being more heinous than simple murderers, nor why rape-by-deception is in fact rape and is in fact a bad thing, but speaking as the author, I am well aware of that. However, I do encourage everyone who is unfamiliar with the ethical and legal theory behind the concept to inform themselves on the topic.


	27. Capsid 4.1

**Capsid 4.1**

Calming down took longer than I would have liked. There was just something humiliating about losing my composure in front of my dad, as though I'd thrown away all those months and years of control and reverted back to being a helpless child.

I needed him too much right then to pull away, though.

"Taylor, are you okay?" my dad asked in rising panic as I struggled to get my breathing under control.

"I'm—I'm not hurt," I said haltingly, rubbing at my damp eyes.

Dad took me by the shoulders and held me out at arm's length, checking me over just to be sure.

"You went through my things. You read my notebook. _Why?"_ I asked in a cracked voice.

My dad's mouth tightened into a line. "The school told me you were skipping classes. I didn't know where you'd _gone,_ Taylor, and I still don't! Where _were_ you?"

 _I was watching my partner kill a man in cold blood_. "I was with Lisa," I lied. "I had to get away. From school, from—just everything."

My dad's shoulders sagged slightly, his concern and hurt winning out against his anger. "I understand you felt like you needed to escape, but what I don't understand is _why_. Why didn't you _tell_ me it was so bad, instead of running away?"

The pain in his eyes and voice made me look away, guilt clawing at my insides. "How much did you read?" I asked.

"Not all of it. Not even most. I can barely even finish a page at a time," my dad admitted, letting go of my shoulders and clenching his fists at his sides. "But I've seen enough to know the school lied. That... _woman_ looked me in the eye and lied right to my face when she told me they'd protect you. Please, just talk to me."

I shook my head. How could I even sum up the dynamic at school?

I stood there, thinking for a few moments, quietly grateful my dad was giving me the time to sort out my scattered thoughts rather than barrage me with more questions. Wordlessly, my dad sat us both down on the couch, while I tried to figure out how to broach the two years of suffering and abuse I desperately wanted to blot out of my mind.

"It's like..." I trailed off, my mind casting back to a frustrating conversation I'd had before going to the library to contact Tattletale. "I talked to Mr. Gladly on Monday. He asked me about the bullying he'd seen. He asked me if I wanted to go to the principal or vice principal about it, and I asked him what would happen if I did. He said they _might_ get suspended for a few days, _if_ I can prove what they did. I can't prove it, though, because when it's my word against theirs, they _always_ win. Even if I got enough proof to get them suspended for a few days, they'll just plot revenge and make things even worse for me. They'll get away with it, too, because Madison acts all sweet and innocent, Sophia's the track star, and Emma's dad is a rich lawyer."

"Emma," my dad murmured, sounding like even _he_ didn't fully believe me. "What _happened_ between the two of you?"

I threw up my hands, torn between laughing and crying. "I don't _know!_ I've been asking that question every day for the past two years! On the day I got back from summer camp, she was suddenly friends with Sophia, and she just turned into a massive _bitch_ for no good reason!"

My dad shook his head. "Why didn't you take your teacher up on his offer, then? If Emma and her friends are bullying you, then you don't have to just _take_ it! The school administration failed to prevent the bullying, but the least they can do now is punish it!"

"I know they won't," I said bitterly. "The administration says all these things, but right after Mr. Gladly was finished talking with me, I went outside and got cornered by Emma and a bunch of other girls, all insulting me. He came out the door after me, and you know what he did when he saw me being bullied? _Nothing_. They're not on my side. _No one_ is."

My dad stood from the couch so suddenly, it made me flinch back in surprise. For a second, I thought my dad was going to punch the wall or something. I didn't really blame him—I kind of wanted to hit something right then, too.

After a moment, my dad straightened his shoulders and turned back to look at me, his green eyes hard and resolute. "No, Little Owl. _I'm_ on your side, and I always will be. We're going to do something about this, and we're going to do it _together,_ because clearly just enduring it isn't working. We've having a meeting with your teachers and principal to actually address this."

After hearing those words and the pet name that my mom had given me, an impossible feeling of hope started to rise in my chest. There was just something so selfishly cathartic in seeing my dad like this, so full of righteous fury on my behalf. I used to be afraid that telling my dad about the bullying would only make him explode in anger and then sink back into depression when he proved unable to stop it, but now? Seeing him like this? It only made me feel like a weight was lifting off of me.

Maybe, somehow, I'd started to convince myself that something could be done. I couldn't quite convince myself that we'd succeed, but what Alex had told me earlier came back to mind—I shouldn't do what my enemies wanted me to do. I might lose, but at least I'd go down fighting, and I wouldn't be alone. Maybe that was enough.

"Okay," I said, nodding my assent. "Okay. I think... I'm ready for this. Whatever comes next."

Sitting down next to me, my dad put his arm over my shoulder, and I leaned into him, suddenly exhausted. We just sat like that for a few minutes, in comfortable silence.

"I feel guilty," my dad said after a while.

I shifted, looking up at him. "Why? You didn't have anything to do with this."

His eyes narrowed. "Yeah. That's the problem. I haven't been involved enough. But that's not entirely true, either. Back when your mom was still alive, the opportunity for you to skip a grade came up. I argued against it, because I thought you'd be happier in the same grade as your best friend."

"Oh." I said, unsure what I even thought about that, much less what to say about it.

My dad sighed, pushing up his glasses to rub at his eyes. "What about your new friend? Lisa? Isn't she going to Winslow too? Are you skipping class together?"

The sick, sour guilt in my stomach returned with a vengeance. "No—like I said, she's a bit older than me. She graduated early. We actually... we had a bit of a fight today."

"What happened?" my dad said with renewed alarm. "Did she hurt you?"

I took a deep, shuddering breath. "Not exactly. But I found out she was lying to me about something. It's not even that I really _disagree_ with what she did, but just the fact she tried to hide it from me... it hurt. I'm sorry, Dad. Sorry for lying to you, too. Trying to pretend like everything was fine."

He hugged me tighter. "I love you, Taylor, and I'll be here for you, no matter what. Never forget that."

"I love you too, Dad." I said quietly.

We talked for the better part of an hour after that, making plans for how to approach the school, compiling the evidence and notes I'd written out for months upon months. I managed to move my backpack containing my costume into my room without raising suspicion, which was a relief, because I was far too emotionally drained to start up _that_ discussion with my dad, too. I'd had more than enough confessions and revelations for one day.

The tentative plan was to use the weekend to prepare, then present our best case on Monday. I wasn't even sure what I wanted yet—expulsion for the bullies, transfer to Arcadia High where all the rich kids and junior superheroes went, some kind of lawsuit against the school faculty, or all of the above. My dad promised he'd help me iron out all the details and options later, but after a perfunctory dinner, we'd both decided to turn in to bed early.

Despite my exhaustion, I sat wide awake in my bed, thinking.

I'd been lying about the bullying. Alex had been lying about Lung. I stood by him to lie to New Wave by omission. The bullies lied about me constantly. The school lied as a matter of general policy. And, of course, there were all the lies I told my dad to keep my cape life secret.

I was just so sick of it all. How long would it take before this entire house of cards just collapsed under its own weight? How long would I have before my dad found out I'd been lying to him about my cape life as well? How much would that hurt him, after all this? Telling the truth had been agonizing, but at least I felt better afterwards. Maybe it would be better to just rip the band-aid off. Get it all out in the open.

What would even happen if I just started telling the truth? I had options. I didn't like the idea of joining the Wards, joining another regimented clique of teenagers that might end up with me being the outcast just like at school, but maybe New Wave would take me instead. All I had to do was be honest about my civilian identity, too. Maybe that might even help put a spotlight on all the bullying I'd suffered.

I knew it was all just a fantasy, though. I could never out myself to the public. The idea of the entire _world_ being able to scrutinize me, pick apart my whole miserable life, learn about the bullying, learn about the _locker,_ it sounded like my own personal hell. At least while I was in costume, I could pretend to be something better than what I was.

I wasn't ready to abandon Alex, either. I'd already damned myself by covering for his murder, no matter how justified it was. He could ruin my reputation as a hero in an instant with that information, just as surely as I could ruin him. But that was just an excuse, a convenient reason to continue sticking by him. For all that Alex could be a not-so-lovable dick sometimes, I felt like he _depended_ on me, on some level. Sure, he was more than capable of taking care of himself in a fight, but he always seemed like he was in a cold, lonely place whenever I wasn't around to distract him. The events of the past day only drove home the fear I had for him originally—that without any friends or support, the gangs and dark desperation of this city would swallow Alex up, corrupting him and turning him into something unrecognizable.

Maybe Alex needed me as a conscience, or maybe just a companion, I wasn't sure. Whatever the case, I suspected he was a lot more vulnerable and insecure than he acted, and I just didn't have the heart to turn my back on him. Not when his loneliness so closely mirrored mine. There was no one else I could be open to about both my cape life and civilian life. It wasn't that I _trusted_ him, necessarily, but he was uniquely safe. As awful as it was to admit, even to myself, the fact that I could control Alex at any time was comforting. It meant I never had to fear betrayal from him, at least not directly.

Before I could come to any kind of conclusion about the problems swirling around my head, I found myself waking up the next morning to the sound of rain hitting the roof and window.

I sat up groggily, taking a few long moments to remember that I needed to get ready for school today. That brought down my mood almost immediately.

I slipped my legs out from under the covers, then knelt down to get my cell phone out from where I'd plugged it in to charge under the bed. I was just grateful I had bothered to keep the phone with the charger at all times, otherwise my dad might have found the charger and started asking more dangerous questions.

I was a little disappointed, but not surprised that Alex hadn't left me any messages. The way we'd parted kind of implied that we wouldn't talk about what happened, or at least, not let that get in the way until our mission was complete. I started composing a text.

Me: My dad found out I was skipping school. I told him it was because of the bullies, and we're going to have a meeting with the school about it. I don't think I can skip any more classes after this. We'll have to plan around that going forward.

I sent the text, and I didn't have to wait long for the response.

Alex: fuck.

I let out a laugh in spite of myself. He was still eloquent as ever. A moment later, another text came in.

Alex: we first met at night. Do you think you can handle that?

Me: I don't know. Dad actually found out about that time, I just told him I was restless and went out on a midnight walk.

Alex: are you grounded? Is there a curfew? Will he still let you out if the house on weekends, or after school?

Me: I'm not really grounded, but I'm still on thin ice. I do have an idea, though, but I'm not sure you'll like it.

Alex: I'm listening.

Me: We should talk about it in person.

Alex: fine.

Me: Can you meet me in front of my school before class starts? I go to Winslow.

Alex: I know how to get there.

Me: Ok. I'll be there as soon as I can.

I turned the phone off and put it away, then got ready to go downstairs for breakfast. After we finished and my dad left for work, I started gathering up my things. I'd be hiding my superhero backpack more securely in the most unused boxes in our basement. After yesterday's fiasco, there was no way I was leaving my superhero paraphernalia in my room. I didn't feel like wrangling an umbrella, so instead I grabbed an old plastic poncho from the closet and made my way to the bus stop.

As the bus neared the gates of Winslow, I could feel Alex entering my range again. It happened noticeably earlier than before, now that my radius seemed to be expanding for reasons I couldn't even begin to guess at. It wasn't even slightly painful anymore, almost like my power had grown accustomed to Alex's presence.

Right away, I noticed that something was profoundly _off_ about Alex, even though I was excluding almost every detail of his biology from my power.

On closer inspection, I discovered that Alex's internal anatomy had undergone a drastic transformation since I'd last seen him. There was no longer anything even remotely recognizable as human inside him anymore, with the exception of his brain. I chanced a closer examination, and found that his bones, organs, and every other part of his body had fused together into a nearly-solid, incredibly dense mass. His insides were no longer hollow and strewn with freely-moving tendrils shoring everything up on the outside, instead it was like his tendrils were crammed together like Tetris pieces, barely capable of moving individually.

Although Alex's internal anatomy was no longer recognizable enough to be horrifying, there was still something vaguely disturbing about it. I felt like if I were to prick his skin with a needle, all the tendrils inside would explode out like an overfilled balloon.

I shuddered at the disgusting mental image and withdrew my power from him. I kept enough of an eye on him to know his location, at least, and made a beeline towards him.

Alex was standing under a black umbrella not too far from the school's open, rusty gated entrance. He had changed his form yet again, this time to a very tall teenager in a blue varsity football jacket. With his curly black hair, wide mouth, and large, brown eyes, he looked strangely like _me,_ if only I had been born a boy and worked out every day of my life. He looked too neat and well-formed, more like one of those adult actors who were cast to play a teen jock in a 1950s movie, but at the same time, too many of his features were genuinely youthful for him to look like an adult. It was both striking and unnerving.

Upon seeing me, Alex gave me a warm smile. "Hey, cousin Taylor! Glad I caught you," he said loudly, for the benefit of the few other students and security guard who were staring at the towering stranger loitering at the entrance of the school.

Oh. So that was his angle. God, why couldn't he have come up with something less embarrassing? I caught sight of Emma with a gaggle of her minions under one of the roofed walkways, watching us with narrow eyes. Just wonderful.

"Hi, Alex," I said, a bit apprehensively. "I hope you weren't waiting long."

"Nah. In fact, you just missed your friend, he overheard me talking about you to the security guard," Alex said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

 _"Friend?_ What friend? I don't have any friends," I said, bewildered. A moment later, I realized what I'd just said, and felt my cheeks start to burn with shame at having blurted that out loud.

Alex chuffed bemusedly, raising an eyebrow. "He was a little guy, real motormouth, seemed defective. Ring any bells?"

I resisted the urge to palm my own face. "Ugh. Greg Veder. Of course. He thinks we're friends because we're both the school outcasts."

"Huh. Well, anyway, thanks for meeting me here, cuz. Let's find a good place to talk before class starts," Alex said with a warm, kind smile. His voice was the same as his normal one, but the way he _spoke_ was different, as though he had taken ten years' worth of speaking and singing classes since the last time I'd seen him, giving even his normal speaking voice a compelling, almost lyrical quality.

I paused, shivering a little. This was all _extremely_ strange. Alex didn't openly smile like that, not ever. When he smiled, it was either ironic, mocking, or something small and sincere that I'd glimpsed only a few times, which he quickly turned away or hid. I followed behind him, suddenly feeling wary that he was up to something.

"You just _thanked_ me. Okay, who are you, and what did you do with the real Alex?" I said half-seriously.

He laughed and waved a hand dismissively. "I'll explain when we find some privacy."

Feeling dubious, if not necessarily threatened, I followed him down the sidewalk, past where the buses were lining up to drop off students.

"This should be far enough away that we aren't overheard. We can speak freely here," he said, still behaving as friendly as could be.

"Do you want to start with why you're still acting so weird even though we're alone?" I said, a bit of challenge creeping into my voice.

He held up his hands placatingly. "I only wanted to say I'm sorry about what happened yesterday. I didn't like the way we left things off, and it's been bothering me ever since. I still think I did the right thing, but I admit, I could have handled everything that came after much better than I did. I put you in a terrible position. I won't ever do anything like that again unless we _both_ agree to it, I promise."

I shivered slightly. In a way, we _did_ both agree to it, considering I could have stopped him, but didn't. The creepiest thing about this performance, though, was that he sounded _genuinely_ sincere, even though I knew he wasn't.

I held my hands up to my head, feeling like I had to physically stop myself from screaming at him. "Alex, stop. Just _stop_. You don't have to do this."

He paused, politely waiting for me to continue.

"You _know_ what I'm talking about," I said sharply. "You're not sorry. You don't regret what you did. You're just acting like you are because _I'm_ upset. This whole show isn't any more real than the disguise of the guy with the Boston accent you put on. Can we please just speak frankly? As _ourselves?"_

For the first time, a tiny crack showed in the friendly, concerned façade he was putting on. His earnest smile froze, and he looked at me curiously, as though I were a math problem he was trying to solve. Then, his mouth twisting into a small, familiar smirk, he shrugged in defeat.

"You can _always_ see right through me, no matter how perfect the disguise or act I put on. I don't know whether to be impressed or annoyed," said Alex, returning to his normal gruff tone and standoffish demeanor.

I relaxed a bit. That whole experience had been strangely harrowing, far more so than any disguise or act he'd put on yet. The fact that it was so _realistic_ only made it infinitely worse.

"Thank you," I said with a sigh. "I prefer it when you at least act like an _honest_ asshole, rather than a nice pretender just telling me what I want to hear. I get enough of that here at Winslow."

Alex gave an amused snort. "Fine by me. I just figured since our deal was that I'd help you get established as a superhero, I might as well act the part, try to make up for yesterday."

Was _that_ what he was trying to do? Okay, I admit, if I hadn't already known him prior to this, I probably would have fallen for his act hook, line, and sinker, but still, the idea of Alex playing the part of a kind, selfless golden-age superhero instead of a mercenary rogue didn't fit with my image of him at all.

"About yesterday—" I began haltingly. "It was a bad situation, and there were no good options. I'd prefer to just put it behind us for now. I asked you here to do something for me. You can treat it like one of the favors of our deal, I don't care. I need you to help me craft an excuse to get out of the house."

"So you need an alibi, something to hide the time you're spending in your cape life, something that you can easily pass off to your dad," Alex said with a nod. "There are a lot of different ways we could do that, but you said you had an idea I might not like. What is it?"

I cringed slightly. There was just no good way to phrase this request, so I just started at the beginning. "I kind of told my dad I'd been spending my time with a new friend. Lisa. He even asked me to invite her over for dinner. I figured, you could... maybe come to my house tonight, and pretend to be her?"

Alex rolled his eyes. "What, is that it? You were worried I'd refuse because I don't want to impersonate your imaginary friend? I'm not an eight-year-old, I know I'm not going to get _cooties_ or some shit from spending an evening pretending to be a girl. If it means getting in more hours to search for Bakuda, then fine, I'll do it."

I blinked in surprise. "I honestly didn't think you'd get on board with the idea so easily. I, uh, kind of didn't have a plan for how to actually convince my dad to let me stay at your house or whatever."

"Maybe we can say I'm tutoring you or something," Alex said with a careless shrug. "It's kind of true, anyway."

"Kind of," I echoed, considering the idea. "Actually, that works pretty well. I already told him you agreed to help me with cape-related homework in my World Issues class."

Alex gave me a nonplussed look. "Wait, you have _homework_ on—never mind. Of course you fucking do. What are your other classes here?"

"Computers, Art, and Math," I replied.

"Only those four?" Alex said, sounding personally offended by my curriculum. "What the hell happened to _science?"_

"I took it the year before," I said, a bit defensively. "I guess I might as well tell you, since you need to know anyway, but I'm a sophomore."

Alex's mouth twisted up in a wry grin. "A seventeen-year-old sophomore, huh? Got held back a lot despite your extensive vocabulary, I see."

My cheeks heated up in embarrassment. "I'm actually fifteen," I admitted.

"I had a feeling you were lying," Alex said dryly.

"I guess I should also tell you my full name is Taylor Anne Hebert. My dad's name is Danny." I paused for a moment, mustering my fortitude, then met Alex's eyes again. "My mom died four years ago. It's just me and my dad, now."

"I see," Alex said neutrally.

A thick silence settled between us. Alex eventually looked aside and changed the subject. "So, does this 'Lisa' of yours have an official last name I should know about?"

I shook my head.

"I'll just use my own, then. Not as though I'm getting any other use out of it, anyway. I always go by pseudonyms." said Alex.

"I don't think I ever caught your last name, actually," I said, tilting my head as I wracked my memories.

"It's Mercer," Alex said. "Alexander James Mercer."

"Good to know," I said, committing the name to memory. "So, now that that's out of the way, do you want to go out looking for Bakuda after dark? My bugs'll be hampered by the rain, but I can still search."

Alex looked at me like I was crazy. "What? Hell no. Bakuda and her goons are probably holed up out of the rain, too. You're stuck here in school anyway, so we might as well set up the cover you'll be using. I'll head over to the school library and work on our cover story there, then I can prep you during lunch period and give you notes to study during your other classes. There's a _lot_ you still need to learn about parahuman sciences."

I was a bit unnerved by the fervor with which he said that. "Wait, you mean you _actually_ want to tutor me about capes after this, too?"

Alex nodded. "Might as well. Think of it like an extension of your combat training. The PRT came up with all the power classifications and Master/Stranger protocols for a _damned_ good reason, you know, so we should take advantage."

I could have laughed at that. Spending part of the school day geeking out over cape things with Alex sounded like a lot of fun, actually, and just the kind of distraction I needed now that I thought about it.

Emma and company were not about to let me have a good day without a fight, however. Emma, Madison, and three of the lesser cronies set up an ambush party outside the door to the classroom, and as soon as I made an appearance, they launched into the gossip of the day.

"Did you see her cousin this morning? Oh my _God,_ if my family ever needed to send a _babysitter_ to make sure I actually went to school, I think I'd just kill myself to escape the embarrassment," Madison said, gleefully scandalized.

"Isn't it obvious by now she has no shame? She'd be _long_ gone if she had any. Just _look_ at her," Emma said, and the other five girls burst into uproarious laughter.

I kept my head low and walked past them without looking like I was fleeing, the sound of their mocking laughter hounding me for a good long while. Alex wasn't even my real cousin, but the notion of being a burden on him still stung.

I was in no mood to endure more snide gossip, so when lunchtime rolled around, I cheated slightly using my powers, sticking a bug on each of my bullies and their little sub-cliques, using their relative positions to sneak my way to the library.

I had no clue what Alex might have said or done to gain access to the library—Winslow's apathy was probably a good guess, though—but sure enough, there he was at one of the tables, several books open in front of him, scribbling away on some flash cards he'd procured from somewhere.

True to his word, Alex dove right in to educating me about parahuman science, and unlike his sparring methods, he didn't just throw a book at my head and tell me to figure it out. He actually asked me questions to evaluate what I already knew, and chose from among his prepared material to fit. My _actual_ teachers weren't exactly a high bar to clear, but Alex was so much better at teaching than them it wasn't even funny.

I left the library armed with a stack of flashcards and two new books, one on the history of the Parahuman Response Team which had a chapter about how they classified capes into different categories, and another unrelated book called _Introductory Statistics_ that Alex insisted I read in my free time, claiming that getting a sense of practical numeracy and proportions would help me infinitely more than the algebra Mr. Quinlan was teaching me ever could. I couldn't argue that algebra seemed useless to me right now, but it still felt like he was assigning extra homework that wouldn't actually help me.

Things hadn't quite gotten back to normal between me and Alex, but I was more relieved than I cared to admit that the core of our partnership was still intact, and our rapport was still strong. At this point, going back to flying solo was practically unthinkable to me, even though I'd been prepared to take on the city's criminals by myself just a few days ago. That had been a project always doomed to failure, I now realized. Alex's sobering statistics about solo independent heroes backed up that belief.

With Alex by my side, though, I truly felt like I had a shot at proving myself—to the city, to Armsmaster, even to myself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three guesses whose simulacrum Alex was trying to use to manipulate Taylor. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for her, the sudden personality shift steered Alex's performance straight into the Uncanny Valley for Taylor. Incidentally, while all this was going down, a certain bank was being robbed by five villains...
> 
> Coming up next time, Alex and Danny finally meet!


	28. Capsid 4.2

**Capsid 4.2**

Alex couldn't help but feel that he was cheated.

At first, he thought that by gaining Victor's skills, he'd be able to persuade anyone to do anything he wanted. Sadly, he was only about as good as a human could be in that respect, which was to say, _not good enough_. Taylor had noticed his drastic shift in behavior right away, and even though his acting was unimpeachable and his conduct was perfectly polite and approachable, she still asked that he drop the act.

It was a bittersweet request. On the one hand, Alex was secretly gratified that Taylor preferred his company to the outwardly charming facsimile Victor had cultivated, and he was glad that he didn't have to go through all the hassle of pretending to be someone else around her. On the other hand, he'd failed to manipulate her, which had been the whole point of his trial run.

Even more annoying than his failure was the fact that Alex couldn't integrate all of Victor's skills. Some skills, such as singing, driving, and fighting, all slotted in effortlessly. For skills that required more conscious effort, however, such as interacting with people, Alex had to construct a very invasive partial simulacrum, suppressing his own instincts and thoughts and reactions in favor of what the dearly departed Victor would do in a given situation.

The root source of the problem was that Alex didn't get Victor's _superpower,_ the ability that had allowed him to steal all those skills in the first place. The general trend was clear after sufficient experimentation—more situational and lesser-used skills, such as knife-throwing, were somehow delegated to Victor's power. As a result, Alex could only access the skills that Victor used regularly enough to genuinely become a master of them in his own right. That restriction would have been a lot less galling if Victor hadn't wasted so much of his time on useless activities that wealthy twits used to signal their superiority and good breeding, such as singing, cooking, and drawing. As it stood, all the languages Victor had stolen were almost a complete wash, as well as several of the more esoteric physical skills.

Alex's new acquisition would soon have a chance to redeem itself, however.

After Taylor had given her address and left the school library for her afternoon classes, it was up to Alex to meet Taylor at her home later, posing as her imaginary friend 'Lisa.' He needed to convince Danny Hebert to let Taylor spend the afternoon studying with him. It wasn't even necessarily a lie—Alex was teaching Taylor practical things anyway, and he certainly didn't want a dullard as an apprentice, so he might as well spend some time on Taylor's broader edification. It wasn't like they had much else to do while searching for Bakuda, and investments in Taylor had already proven to provide rapid dividends.

Alex left the school library shortly after Taylor. He had two hours before he was due to meet her at her house, the address of which he'd already memorized. He had plenty of time to get there, but that wasn't the problem.

The problem was the disguise he intended to use. Alex was so glutted with excess biomass, he couldn't even fit into his _original_ size, much less take on the template of Olivia or Steph, the only two women he'd consumed thus far. Steph was the taller and stockier of the two, at a respectable five foot eight, but she still wasn't even 160 pounds. Alex had already been forced to scale his normal form up to a bit over six feet tall from sheer lack of space, so there was no chance he'd be able to take on Steph's form.

There were several options to deal with this, each with varying degrees of unpleasantness. He'd need privacy to explore all his options, though, so he set out for the abandoned paper recycling facility where he and Taylor had sparred. It wasn't too far away, but the rain made the trip feel longer.

Alex let himself inside the dark building, noting that the earthy stench of insects was strong. The place had become a paradise for bugs, unsurprisingly, with all the dead insects smeared all over from the sparring sessions. Every footstep of his sent a small cloud of insects flying away, accompanied by the faint steam of rain evaporating from his feverish body.

Satisfied he was alone, Alex constructed a new template in his mind's eye, a hybrid of Stephanie and Olivia, with the former's build and clothes, and the latter's appearance, minus the scar. He attempted shapeshifting into the new template, but unsurprisingly, he wasn't able to. He was already crushed down as far as he'd go.

Returning to his default form, Alex gave serious consideration to pretending to be overweight, but he reflexively disliked the idea. Aside from the fact that it would mortally offend his pride, the problem was that templates were fiendishly complex and difficult to construct from scratch without some kind of reference. Alex didn't have the physical template of anyone fatter than Spencer, and obviously the fat distribution of men and women varied in a number of extremely noticeable ways.

There was no harm in trying, though. Alex focused on his mental image, and just like with his dog form, he attempted to fill in the gaps and sculpt something 'manually,' for lack of a better term.

It took a few minutes of fiddling, but Alex eventually came up with a bulked-out template large enough for him to fit into. However, as he assumed the form, he could immediately tell there were severe problems. Alex tried moving around, but the added bulk moved like rigid slabs of muscle more than fat, making his weight seem more like an actor's unconvincing fatsuit than anything. Try as he might, there was no way to get around the rock-hard density of his tightly-compressed biomass.

Alex changed back to his default form and rubbed at his temples. It was humiliating to even contemplate the idea of someone seeing through his disguise because his body fat didn't have enough _jiggle_. No, that was the last straw. There was no way in hell he was going to use that template, at least not while he was so inflexible at critical mass. He wasn't out of ideas yet, though, not by a long shot.

The obvious second option was simply to shed the excess biomass. Alex hated the idea of parting with something he'd worked so hard to get, but it might still be recoverable.

The key piece of evidence in favor of this was the fact that he'd managed to survive his own decapitation via Bakuda's booby trap. He'd watched as pieces of himself sprouted tendrils and flailed helplessly while they burned in that baleful blue flame, and he knew right away that those pieces of himself were just like the scattered, animalistic tendrils he'd become when he consumed Lung. It was every tendril for itself, a fracturing of both mind and body.

Who was to say that pieces of himself couldn't survive independently for longer periods of time? Surely not being on fire was going to help them last longer, and it wasn't like even normal human organs couldn't be stored and transplanted after a while. The question was, would it be enough time for him to conduct his business, then return to make himself whole again?

That wasn't even the half of it, though—if Alex could regenerate himself like a starfish, then theoretically, there was nothing stopping him from making his own Siamese twin, cleaving himself apart, and then having two Alex Mercers. The idea sounded good for about three seconds, then it started sounding off alarm bells in his head.

A clone would be a competing mouth to feed, doubling Alex's risk of exposure. More importantly, as the two diverged, the clone might even try usurping the original Alex, which was _exactly_ the sort of thing Alex would do if he were faced with that kind of Prisoner's Dilemma. And now that Alex had thought of that, he couldn't _un_ -think it, and now from this point on, any clone he separated from himself would know that, too. God _damn_ it.

Of course, it was said that the way out of a Prisoner's Dilemma where both parties _knew_ the other would betray was to cooperate, and trust that the other party knew it was in their own best interests to cooperate as well instead of facing mutual betrayal.

Alex laughed in spite of himself. Trusting a clone? Yeah, no. _Fuck_ no. Alex had seen a dozen different variations of that movie, and he knew the outcome every single time. If he had _any_ other options—any at all—he was absolutely _not_ going to screw around with Frankenstein or Skynet or Pod People or Doppelgängers or whatever. There were a million and one ways that could go wrong, even in the experimental phase.

There were other problems with the idea, too. Most importantly, there was the fact that exponentially-reproducing capes were almost always classified as an S-Class Threat, which meant that whole _regions_ of capes and militaries would band together for the express purpose of killing Alex if anyone ever found out about this potential ability. The S-Class designation always came with an automatic kill order, no exceptions, and authorized the deployment of the Triumvirate as well. There was no way Alex was going to risk tangling with the likes of Legend, Alexandria, and Eidolon.

Still, Alex didn't necessarily need to make a _clone_ of himself, just a lump of biomass that would be able to stay alive for a short period of time. More than likely, it wouldn't be enough to put him on anyone's radar, even if it ever got out. The idea only led to more problems, though.

The individual parts of Alex were alive and at least _somewhat_ intelligent, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Just how much could a repository of biomass be expected to follow orders to wait around until Alex got back? If nothing else, he knew that any part of himself cut off from the whole would be hungry, and the larger the piece, the smarter and more independent it would be. That was something of an issue.

Essentially, the piece of Alex had to be smart enough to heed his orders not to go off on its own, but it also had to be dumb enough to not realize that it could just become another copy of Alex. The problem was that he didn't know if those two ranges overlapped or not. It was all too easy to imagine hiding his excess biomass in a hole only to later discover it was gone, having burrowed away like Über's pet abomination.

At least the thought of that gave Alex an idea for what to do with all the excess fluids from his consumption, though. Instead of using his tendrils to root or grip onto walls, he could use them to inject waste fluids directly into the ground like a syringe. It wouldn't get rid of the incidental blood spatter, but maybe if he engulfed his victims entirely beforehand, like Venom from the comic books—albeit without the "symbiotic" part—then Alex could create a watertight seal around his victim. It was something worth investigating later.

Alex came up with one last option for trimming down, and it was sort of iffy. Instead of hunting for a single silver bullet, he could throw every last minor idea he had at the wall and see what sticks. Hopefully, the cumulative effect would amount to something.

Just to get an idea of what he had to work with, Alex tried shapeshifting into the hybrid template he wanted to pass off as Lisa Mercer, but without any regard for size, just like his current slightly scaled-up form.

The results were suboptimal. Alex now towered nearly six and a half feet tall, which was just a _bit_ outside the norm for what appeared to be a 19-year-old girl. He sighed, and it came out as a woman's low contralto. Even his _voice_ was deeper than his template ought to have been, thanks to the increased size of his mouth and vocal chords.

Being in a woman's body felt simultaneously familiar, yet alien. Even putting aside the obvious, his center of balance was different, and the proportions of everything were slightly off. The shoulders were too close together, the hips were too high and wide, and all of that served to draw Alex's attention to the fact that men and women walked differently.

Alex constructed a partial simulacrum of Olivia's motor skills to try to compensate for the differences, and conveniently enough, his sense of unfamiliarity and vague discomfort vanished with it. Now he felt perfectly natural and comfortable in his own skin, like he'd been this way his entire life. The only remaining incongruity was the strange cognitive dissonance between his female body and his unshaken mental certainty that he was still a _he_ and not a _she_. It vaguely reminded Alex of how Marcus felt playing a female character in a video game—his own sense of masculine identity seemed wholly separate and untouched by his current feminine presentation.

Despite the success of the simulacrum, this starting point of size was even worse than Alex had imagined. He was simply too big. He now had doubts about whether his many small tweaks would be enough to overcome such a deep deficit, but he still had to try.

Like an engineer inspecting every inch of an aircraft to shed weight, Alex looked for ways to shift mass. He thickened his template more subtly than he did before, which allowed him to shrink a surprising amount, to just a bit over six feet tall. He offset the extra padding with more muscle, which only helped a little, but it made the rocky solidity of his flesh seem much more natural. He even resorted to growing his straw-blonde hair out to waist-length, though the effects of that were almost negligible.

At last, Alex had a breakthrough when he was contemplating the rain outside, and struck by sudden inspiration, he constructed a huge, fur-lined green parka jacket. His clothes were made of biomass too, after all, and a puffy knee-length parka had an _immense_ volume. Sequestering his biomass in the parka allowed Alex to shrink down to about the same height Steph had been originally, tall for a girl, but not tall enough to attract undue attention.

Alex moved around, shifting this way and that. The parka was stiff and heavy, but that was to be expected. It didn't seem out of the ordinary at all, and he counted that as a win—now he wouldn't have to pretend to be some Amazonian giantess or the long-lost love child of Neil Pelham.

That wasn't to say Alex's disguise looked _completely_ normal, exactly. All told, 'Lisa Mercer' looked like the kind of girl who would dominate women's wrestling, and as a result of Steph's punk sensibilities, she dressed like she was trying to intimidate the other butch lesbians into bowing down before their new queen. Alternatively, the disguise faintly resembled the supervillain Bitch. That, at least, was something Alex had the ability to change, so he swapped out Steph's stressed and acid-washed blue jeans for normal pants, and swapped her red-and-black shirt for a white one with a pleasant green and blue Jackson Pollock-esque abstract design created with the help of Victor's artistic skills, which he showed off by leaving the parka open.

With that done, Alex couldn't help but make a few tweaks, starting with his larynx. He modified his voice with the help of Victor's skills until it became an alluring alto, the kind of captivating voice more appropriate for a chanteuse performing in a smoky cocktail lounge. He resisted the vain urge to make Lisa's body a supermodel beauty to match—after all, he was trying to _convince_ Danny Hebert, not _seduce_ him, and that kind of appearance would have been too rare and attention-grabbing besides. Still, humans subconsciously considered beautiful things more trustworthy, so it stood to reason that a stunning voice might confer a similar, albeit more subtle benefit, lending more weight to his words.

After a few more minor adjustments to his shoes and the partial simulacrum he was using to make Lisa Mercer seem natural, he felt as ready as he'd ever be. This was going to be Alex's first attempt at a potentially long-term assumed identity, so his performance had to be flawless. He was excited to test out all his new tools and powers in the field, yet apprehensive about unseen pitfalls.

Alex began making his way to the Hebert household, which was in an old and tired-looking suburb a ways inland from the industrial south side of the Docks, roughly in-between ABB and Empire territory. Tiny two-story wooden houses stood upon postage-stamp plots, harkening back to the prerogative of cheap housing to take advantage of a booming postwar industry that was now all but forgotten.

Taylor's house was no different from the rest, with a slightly battered and rust-spotted car in the driveway, and paint that needed a touch-up. Alex went to ascend the porch stairs and—

 _Crunch_.

"Fuck me!" Alex snarled in a rough tone that sounded almost comical coming from his new, melodiously feminine voice. He extricated his foot, which had snapped right through the bottom step of the porch without resistance like it wasn't even there. On closer inspection, the wood seemed rotted.

Alex looked back up at the house, and he started to have second thoughts. The worn, rickety wooden building hardly looked like it would be able to withstand his weight, no matter how lightly he tread.

It was too late to turn back, though. The noise and Alex's outburst had drawn the attention of both Heberts. Taylor appeared at the door first, looking pale and mortified—she'd probably had him pegged all the way down the street, in that annoying way she did—and she was soon joined by her father.

Danny Hebert was a tall, gangly man with a weak chin, large green eyes that were seemingly magnified even further by his glasses, and a balding pate. He looked more like a dotty schoolteacher than the hotheaded dockworker Taylor had briefly described.

"Oh, God, are you all right?" asked Danny, kneeling down to see if Alex was hurt.

The sarcastic retort Alex wanted to say was blocked by his partial simulacrum, as though he temporarily lost the ability to speak altogether. It was an utterly bizarre sensation, having a separate, foreign part of himself exerting veto power over how he spoke and acted. It made him feel both scrutinized and chastened. With a fair amount of chagrin, Alex begrudgingly allowed his partial simulacrum of Victor's social skills to take the wheel and guide his behavior. Alex looked up at Danny and smiled reassuringly.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Not even a scratch, I was only startled. Sorry about your step, Mr. Hebert." Alex said, pretending to care more about the property damage.

Danny straightened and waved his hands. "No, no, this is my fault. I've been meaning to replace that step, but I just never got around to it. I guess Taylor and I have just gotten into the habit of skipping over it."

"Yeah, I should have warned you, but it slipped my mind," Taylor added with a grimace.

"Well, I have to say, smashing your property and cussing like a sailor wasn't how I'd hoped to meet you, but let's try to start over," Alex said with a charming, infectious laugh that rang out as clear as bells. "I'm Lisa. Lisa Mercer."

Danny dipped his head in a nod. "Pleased to meet you, Lisa. You can just call me Danny. Why don't you come in out of the rain?"

Alex looked at the remaining steps and quickly calculated that the best route would be to step as close to the edge of the step as possible, keeping his weight off the middle. Gingerly, gently, Alex lifted himself up to the second step, which creaked loudly even over the sound of the rain, but it held.

As Taylor and Danny turned to head inside, Alex cast a dubious glance down at the front porch, which was also wooden. He decided to only step on the segments with nails, denoting where there was a structural board underneath. It forced him to step a bit awkwardly, but thankfully neither of his hosts seemed to notice.

 _Fucking hell. I thought I'd solved the critical mass issue, and yet here I am, tiptoeing around like a nervous elephant,_ Alex thought to himself.

Inside, the house was more cozy than dilapidated, but still a mix of both. The furniture was well-worn but not falling apart, and the TV was an old CRT set. The place smelled like wood and Mexican food.

"Can I get your coat?" Danny asked.

"No thanks, I'm actually a bit chilled, now that you mention it," Alex said quickly.

"That's fine, make yourself at home," Danny said with a shrug, then headed off to check something in the kitchen.

Alex cast an aside glance at Taylor, who was hovering nervously nearby. She didn't seem to know what to do with her arms, and her expression was amusingly fraught.

 _"Breathe,_ Taylor," Alex said with a smirk.

Taylor let out a breath she'd been holding in. "Sorry. Not just about the front step, I mean. _God,_ this is way too weird, seeing you like... this. _Here."_

Alex waved a hand dismissively. "It won't be a problem unless you keep freaking out about it. We had a deal, just think of this as me upholding my end of the bargain. So, what's for dinner?"

"We're having chicken enchiladas," said Taylor, seemingly grateful for the change of subject. "You're just in time, actually."

"Great, I'm starving. It smells wonderful in here," Alex said with his voice pitched so that Danny could hear, following Taylor into the kitchen. A tiny dining table was set in the corner, and a third place setting and chair was already added to it. The chairs, too, were made of wood and looked rather frail, much to Alex's internal dismay.

"So, Lisa, Taylor tells me you offered to help tutor her in her World Issues class," Danny said while he was divvying up the enchiladas from a casserole dish.

"That's right," Alex said confidently. "I promised to help her out with the new unit her class is doing on parahumans, in exchange for her help on one of my projects. We'd like to continue—with your permission, of course."

"I'll think about it," Danny hedged, handing Alex a plate, which he accepted with a gracious smile. "What project are you working on?"

"A research project," Alex lied smoothly. "It's for my criminology course. I'm looking through stacks of old books that haven't been digitized, and your daughter has an _extraordinary_ facility at finding things. She's very bright, and a quick study."

"I wish you two wouldn't talk about me like I wasn't here," Taylor grumbled.

"And I wish _you_ would learn to take a compliment!" Alex shot back with a smile. "I'm not in the habit of doling those out lightly, you know."

"Anything to drink?" Danny asked, setting three plates down on the counter.

"Any soda you have, please," Alex replied.

Danny obligingly retrieved a can of coke from the fridge, and the three of them dished up the food onto their respective plates, then brought them over to the table. Alex managed to sort of squat down with his legs folded seemingly at idle beneath him, but actually bearing almost the full force of Alex's weight. It was a bit of a balancing act.

Alex took a bite of the enchiladas, chewing contemplatively. "Like I said, I'm not in the habit of handing out compliments, but credit where it's due, this is really good. Homemade sauce, I can tell. Thanks for having me over."

"Yeah, it's our pleasure. So anyway, you're learning about parahumans? That's a pretty... exciting subject," Danny said cautiously. "I'm not sure about letting Taylor go out into the city, though. Not when it's so dangerous lately. Is it at all possible you can meet up here, or at the school?"

Alex felt a flash of irritation that didn't show on his face the slightest bit. "I live right by the bus stop, up near Pembroke Hill," he said, choosing a relatively safe and affluent part of the city. The clear implication was that Taylor would be safer with Alex than she would be in this neighborhood.

Danny made a noncommittal noise and picked at his food.

"We've already made great progress," said Alex, turning to face his apprentice. "Taylor, why don't you tell us the twelve modern power classifications used by the PRT?"

At Alex's sudden question, Taylor sat up straighter and said in a tone faintly reminiscent of a nursery rhyme, "Mover, Shaker, Brute and Breaker. Master, Tinker, Blaster and Thinker. Striker, Changer, Trump and Stranger."

"A-plus," Alex said with a decisive nod. "Now please, what's the difference between a Breaker and a Changer? Almost everyone gets it wrong."

Taylor's brow furrowed in concentration, but she didn't hesitate. "Breakers enter a different state, one where they have powers, or just different abilities available to them. Changers can simply alter their bodies, and it doesn't have to be anything more than that."

"Correct," Alex said with a satisfied smile. "Last question, what was the date the Golden Age of Parahumans ended?"

"It's a trick question," Taylor said immediately. "People generally say it ended August 11, 1989, the day that Vikare died, but some experts say that was only the start of a long period of decline that ended for good when Behemoth appeared on December 13, 1992."

"Excellent," Alex said warmly. To her credit, Taylor had rattled off the rehearsed lines well. Danny didn't seem suspicious, just impressed.

"I couldn't have answered even half of those right," Danny said to Taylor in surprise, then looked to Alex. "You seem really knowledgeable on the subject, too."

"I should hope so!" Alex said with good humor. "I'm trying to become an expert on parahumans, actually, so teaching Taylor comes pretty naturally to me."

Danny raised an eyebrow at Alex before continuing to set the table. "Is that so? Seems like a pretty difficult subject."

Alex gave a very unladylike snort. "The subject matter isn't _that_ bad, it's basic statistics most of the time. The real problem is that the entire field is pretty much in shambles. I've read some of the scientific papers that are being published, and they've got the most baffling methodological errors I've ever seen. I actually found one that took a population of _four_ Chilean Blasters and ran thirty simulations of population trends out to a _thousand years."_

"What's so bad about that?" Danny asked, and Alex's estimation of the man precipitously dropped for a moment, until he remembered Danny had no reason to trust Alex's expertise.

"You just can't get good data from such a small sample size," Alex explained, hiding a great deal of condescension under a guise of bookish enthusiasm. "It distorts pretty much all of the math involved, but the most important part is that it vastly increases the odds of sampling errors that'll mess with the statistical significance. That word, _significance,_ has a different meaning in statistics. It's not about how _big_ an effect something has, it's actually the odds of whether the results you got are because of random chance. Coincidence, in other words. The lower the odds and the larger the sample, the better—for example, you're a lot less likely to flip a coin and get fifty heads in a row than four."

"I think I see what you mean, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong," Danny pointed out reasonably. "They _are_ actual scientists, after all. Maybe they did something you just aren't aware of. Maybe they even just got lucky and happened to get the right answer by coincidence, like you said."

Alex shook his head. "Trust me, I had to read their methods section _three times_ before I could believe they actually did it that way, and they did. But even if their data _was_ a representative sample, it would be vastly more accurate and useful to run a thousand simulations just thirty years out, rather than the other way around. Usually, in these kinds of computer models, you run _thousands_ of iterations, so you can group the outcomes based on general trends and how often they occur in proportion to each other. Even worse is the thousand-year projection timeline. After that long, there's so much stochasticity—buildup of random changes—that you might as well try to predict the weather by watching butterflies flapping their wings."

At that analogy, Alex noticed Taylor cracking a smile. He shot her a quick knowing look and continued, "The only explanation for why the study's authors did things that way that I find even _remotely_ plausible is that they simply cherry-picked the results they wanted to get, and damn the methodology. The unpleasant truth is that these papers are often filled with meaningless noise, junk science. People are phoning it in because the subject has such high demand that there's basically no barrier to entry and no way to fail, despite a near-total lack of good data that isn't classified."

By that point, both of Danny's eyebrows had crept up to what had once been his hairline. "How old did you say you were, again?"

"Nineteen," Alex said with a smile. "I've always been a bit advanced for my age, though, if you don't mind me bragging."

Danny coughed to hide a laugh, but then a nostalgic look came over him. "Are you attending Brockton University?"

"Community college, actually," said Alex, idly cutting up his food with his fork.

"Smart," Danny said, tapping the side of his nose knowingly. He flashed a smile, which quickly faded as he spoke. "My wife, she—taught at the university. English Literature. She always complained about the kids coming out of high school, barely even literate, but already paying University tuition. She always thought community colleges were underrated."

Alex sensed a pall descending over the mood, and his new social instinct jumped into immediate action to cut through the nascent awkwardness. He acted before he even knew what he was doing, turning to Taylor with languid amusement and saying, "So, your father's a union representative and your mother was a college professor? It's a miracle you didn't end up marching outside City Hall chanting _'_ _down with the patriarchy! death to capitalism!'"_

"The imperialist American pig-dogs will fall like wheat before the glorious bourgeoisie revolution," Taylor deadpanned in a bad Russian accent.

As Danny nearly choked on his glass of water, Alex only quirked an eyebrow. "Do you even know what the word _bourgeoisie_ means?"

"No clue," Taylor said with a shrug. "I think I was just half-remembering a line I heard in a movie once."

"So, Taylor, how'd you meet Lisa?" Danny asked, dabbing at a bit of spilled water with his napkin.

Taylor glanced back at Alex a little nervously. "Well, we kept running into each other at the library, since I wanted to get away from school, you know, and—"

"—And she hasn't been rid of me since," Alex finished teasingly.

Danny frowned a little in concern. "Really? I'd heard you had an argument, though. What was that all about?"

Alex wordlessly deferred to Taylor with a wave. They'd agreed beforehand that Danny would likely be more receptive to Taylor telling him, if the topic came up.

"Um, that's—" Taylor stared down at her plate. "I made an assumption about a guy we both knew. Lisa didn't correct me, and I took that as a lie by omission. We're trying to move past that, now."

The diversion was successful, going by the uncomfortable look on Danny's face. It was easy enough to change the subject afterwards. As the dinner went on, Alex regaled the table with made-up stories about life on campus, pushing further into Danny Hebert's familiar, happy memories in the hopes that he'd subconsciously associate Lisa Mercer with good times.

When dinner with the Heberts drew to a close, Taylor had apparently grown either too anxious or impatient to wait. After taking her dishes to the sink, she told Danny point-blank, "Dad, I'd _really_ like to continue studying with Lisa at her place. She's been a good friend to me, over the last few days."

"You can help out with her project from here, and study over the phone," Danny insisted.

Alex's simulacrum nudged him to cut in at that point, and he followed the instinct, saying "It's not just about getting work done. Frankly, neither of us has much of a social life. It's just not _healthy_ for two young women to be cooped up all alone, without any friends."

"Wait, are you saying you don't have _any_ other friends?" Danny said skeptically, and at Alex's affirmative nod, he winced. "Sorry, that came out wrong. I just wouldn't have expected that. You seem so... outgoing."

"You haven't seen her in action," Taylor said flatly. "I swear, she somehow manages to mortally offend almost everyone else within seconds of meeting them."

Alex smirked, then primly tossed his hair. "It's not _my_ fault if people can't handle the fact that I'm so _obviously_ superior in every way that matters."

"Yes. That. Exactly that." Taylor said, pointing at Alex. "See what I mean?"

Danny cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah. To be honest, Lisa, I'm curious why someone like you has taken such an interest in Taylor. She's only a sophomore, and you're already in college."

Alex ordinarily would have been stumped for a few seconds by that question, since he couldn't tell the truth, but his partial simulacrum raised his right hand and said, "It's nothing untoward, I assure you. I'm not trying to corrupt your daughter. You don't have to worry about me getting her involved in any drugs, gangs, pyramid schemes, forbidden Sapphic romances—"

"Please, God, kill me now," Taylor groaned.

 _"Hush,_ you, I'm making a point," Alex said with a grin. He turned back to Danny, who looked like he was unsure whether to take any of this seriously. "I wasn't moved by pity, either, because I didn't even know about the bullying until she told me later. Fact of the matter is, I didn't think much of Taylor at first, but then I quickly realized that I'd been badly underestimating her. She's not merely intelligent, she's _competent_. That's a rare and precious thing, and more than enough reason to befriend her."

A pained look came over Danny. "And I'm glad for that. Truly, I am. The difference these last few days have been like night and day. I'm just concerned about keeping Taylor safe from bullies, and from the gangs."

"I'm a _thousand_ times more likely to run into the bullies and gangs at Winslow than I am while hanging out with Lisa," Taylor argued heatedly.

Danny hesitated, but looking between the two of them, he finally relented. "I guess you're right about that, as much as I hate to admit it. All right. So long as you keep your grades up, and promise you won't skip school anymore without at least telling me first, I'll allow it."

 _Success_. Alex was afraid this wouldn't work, or that Taylor's last-minute request would push things too fast, but apparently his fears were unfounded.

"I promise," Taylor said immediately.

"Thank you, Danny." Alex said respectfully. "I'll make sure no harm comes to your daughter on my watch. Oh, and for what it's worth, if any of those bullies try _anything_ in front of me, I'll deck them so hard they'll be _shitting teeth_ for the next month," he added sweetly, punching his own palm with a meaty _thwack_.

As Taylor buried her face in her hands, Danny chuckled. "I believe you. It's nice knowing Taylor's got someone to have her back."

"Trust me, a little help makes all the difference in the world," Alex said piously.

After a few more minutes of banter and pleasantries, Alex excused himself under the pretense of needing to get home, and luckily he managed to leave the premises without breaking the Heberts' house any further.

Taylor's reaction to Alex leaving was strange. He picked up on a twinge of reluctance, and he figured that she wished she really did have a friend like he was pretending to be.

That was kind of pathetic, but still useful information, in its own way. Alex could always redeploy the Lisa disguise in order to keep up pretenses with Danny and also shore up Taylor's loyalty. As far as incentives went, it could serve as the carrot while the threat of abandonment could serve as the stick. Figuring out ways to keep Taylor in line was a breeze with Victor's memories and partial simulacrum running; Alex really should have prioritized consuming him first thing.

No matter, now. Alex wasn't done for the day, and now that he was fully sated, his nights had opened up, too. Having his physical needs met for the time being only served to highlight his more abstract and complicated goals. He might as well start by getting to the bottom of this Case 53 business.

To do that, he had another meeting in mind—a meeting with Faultline and her ragtag crew of mercenaries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the same time the next chapter is released, I'm going to be compiling some omakes, story snippets, and if I can make the formatting work, some fan art. I hope you all will enjoy them!


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